House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reviving the establishment’s “virtual wall” policy on the southern border to soften her uncompromising opposition to President Donald Trump’s push for a real fence on the border.
“What the President is proposing is not the best way to protect our borders … We all support border security, and there is a better way to do it … The positive, shall we say, almost technological wall, that can be built is what we should be doing,” Pelosi said January 10.
Pelosi’s focus on a “technological wall” of sensors and drones helps the Democrats hide their push for more migration, despite its impact on Americans’ wages, productivity, tax spending, crime, and civic peace, said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.
“They have to make it sound like they are for some kind of enforcement, and so what they say they are in favor of is ‘smarter enforcement,’ just like the [Barack] Obama administration used to say their ICE strategy of ‘prosecutorial prioritization’ was really ‘smarter enforcement,'” she said.
The Democrats’ push for a “technological wall,” is also very important for the new Democrat legislators elected in swing-districts, she said, adding:
They know they cannot afford to be seen blocking border security. We have to remember that Nancy Pelosi is not in the Speaker’s chair now because voters want to abolish ICE or open the border. The Democrats [in November] won because there were a lot of Democratic candidates who won because they said they were just as hawkish on immigration as Republicans.
Pelosi also has to manage her raucous caucus, which includes moderates from swing-districts and progressives who back the “Abolish ICE!” slogan, Vaughan said.
She has to satisfy the open borders wing of her caucus [and] not veer too far in the direction of the progressives … I think the Democrats in Congress are more extreme on immigration than most Democratic voters are, but they can’t afford to be associated with Abolish ICE! and pro-caravan demands.
Overall, the party “want the charade of enforcement, not actual enforcement, and that is true of border security and every other type of enforcement,” she said.
Other Democrats are touting technology as a full or partial substitute for a real fence. CNN reported January 4:
“It is nothing more than a symbol when you look at it in this perspective,” Bustos said during an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” in reference to President Donald Trump’s proposal for a wall. “If we have a partial wall, if we have fencing, if we have technology used to keep our borders safe, all of that is fine. But it has just become this symbol that the president is not going to have any give-or-take when it comes to this $5 billion.”
Pelosi is also trying to shift the debate away from fences and towards amnesties: “We need to have comprehensive immigration reform … Dreamers and their families and the rest,” she said January 10. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform is what this debate frankly should be about,” she said.
That Democrats’ opposition to a wall is entwined with Democrats’ increasing promotion of migrants above Americans and their children.
On January 4, for example, Pelosi said that a wall “is an immorality — it builds walls in peoples’ minds about who should come here.”
On January 8, after Trump’s national address, Pelosi downplayed the northward flow of economic migrants. The migrants “are a humanitarian challenge, a challenge that President Trump’s own cruel and counter-productive policies have only deepened,” she said.
On January 10, Pelosi said that Trump’s proposed barrier to Central American migration is “discriminatory.”
In February 2018, Pelosi gave a long speech in the House where she praised illegal migrants as better than Americans:
We recognize that they are a blessing to America … the dreamers are all over our country, Mr. Speaker, they are a blessing so across the board …
These are the best of the best. They are so fabulous …
I was impressed by the cumulative effect that they are making on their country. Each of them with their individual contribution to the greatness of America. So exciting, so proud of them …
[They have] great humility about conveying their stories because when you see them and they tell their stories and the passion and the pride — the patriotism, passion, pride, patriotism, that they demonstrate, you will see why anyone who has had the wonderful experience of being in conversation or observing our dreamers, understand why they have had such a high reputation among the American people. some of whom have met them, some of whom have heard about them, some of whom have just catch the spark, catch the spark. Recognize, recognize again the hard work ethic, the commitment to education, to community service, to faith, to family, to the United States of America. It’s a beautiful thing …
Am I not lucky to be able to become so familiar with so many of these beautiful dreamers? We want to send these people back? This talent, this rich talent, this achievement, this determination, this faith in the future, this patriotism for America? I don’t think so. We have to make [an amnesty] happen …
Let us acknowledge the dreamers and their optimism, their inspiration to make America more American…
Nationwide, the bipartisan establishment’s economic policy of using legal migration to boost economic growth shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with cheap white-collar and blue-collar foreign labor. That flood of outside labor spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor of blue-collar and white-collar employees.
The cheap labor policy widens wealth gaps, reduces high tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high tech careers, and sidelines at least five million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with fentanyl addictions.
Immigration also steers investment and wealth away from towns in Heartland states because coastal investors can more easily hire and supervise the large immigrant populations who prefer to live in coastal cities. In turn, that investment flow drives up coastal real estate prices, pricing poor U.S. whites, Latinos and blacks out of prosperous cities, such as Berkeley and Oakland.
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