Desperately aiming for a way around President Trump’s termination of DACA, which will officially end in March 2018, liberals are aggressively trying to push some sort of amnesty through before January 1st ~
Democrats are threatening to shut down the government if so-called “Dreamers” aren’t given a “pathway to citizenship” in the end-of-year spending bill Congress must pass in early December.
The thing is, President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was never constitutional. He had no authority to arbitrarily re-write immigration law, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions pointed out earlier this month ~
In a speech to the Federalist Society, Sessions — a pioneer of the immigration in the national interest movement — blasted the Obama administration’s creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that has given temporary amnesty to nearly 800,000 illegal aliens […]
“Under DACA—without the consent of Congress—individuals here illegally who met certain criteria were granted not only lawful presence but work authorization, and the right to participate in Social Security, which unlawful immigrants are not entitled to have,” Sessions continued. “So no matter what one thinks about the immigration issues and policy, it cannot be defended in my opinion lawfully.”
Rather than argue with the open borders progressives, or worse – cave in to their emotional appeals for the poor “Dreamers” – Congress could actively pursue some meaningful immigration legislation like, for instance, the RAISE Act, introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-MO) and Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) last February. RAISE stands for Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy. What a concept!
The proposed legislation correctly recognizes that the interests of Americans should come before the the interests of non-American immigrants. It represents a return to they way the United States has traditionally addressed immigration.
In September, Sen. Cotton spoke about immigration at Hillsdale College’s Eight Annual Constitution Day Celebration, explaining the founding fathers’ position on the issue ~
(W)hile the Declaration is of course a universal document, it’s also a particular document about one nation and one people. The founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to each other, in English, right here in America-not in Esperanto to mankind in the abstract.
The Constitution carries forward this concept of American citizenship. It includes only one reference to immigration, where it empowers Congress to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” […]
Just because you can become an American doesn’t mean you are an American. And it certainly doesn’t mean we must treat you as an American, especially if you don’t play by our rules.
After all, in our unique brand of nationalism, which connects our people through our ideas, repudiating our law is kind of like renouncing your blood ties in the monarchical lands of old. And what law is more fundamental to a political community than who gets to become a citizen, under what conditions, and when?
Here’s the key point – which progressives like to ignore ~
(A)mong the highest obligations we owe to each other is to ensure that every working American can lead a dignified life. If you look across our history, I’d argue that’s always been the purpose of our immigration system: to create conditions in which normal, hard-working Americans can thrive.
Look no further in fact than what James Madison said on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1790, when the first Congress was debating the very first naturalization law. He said, “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours.” The “worthy” part, not the entire world. Madison continued, “But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community.”
At the risk of sounding horribly callous, we don’t welcome immigrants into the country so we can give them free housing, food and college tuition. We welcome them here so they contribute to making America a better, more prosperous place. Gasp!
Our immigration system doesn’t exist to serve the interests of foreigners or wealthy Americans. No, our immigration ought to benefit working Americans and serve the national interest-that’s the purpose of immigration and the theme of the story of American immigration.
The RAISE Act, as National Review Online described it, is a carefully crafted, albeit limited, bill that would sharpen America’s immigration system so that it serves the American economy, favoring foreigners who have the most to contribute to our country.
Here’s how it would work ~
• Create a skills-based points system similar to Canada’s and Australia’s. When people apply to immigrate here, they’d be given an easy-to-calculate score, on a scale of 0 to 100, based on their education, age, job salary, investment ability, English-language skills, and any extraordinary achievements.
• Twice a year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would invite the top scorers to complete their applications, and it would invite enough high-scoring applicants to fill the current 140,000 annual employment-based green-card slots.
• End the diversity-visa lottery as well as the per-country caps on immigration [Recall, the Diversity Visa Program was the means by which Sayfullo Saipov, the Islamic terrorist who mowed down 8 people in NYC on Oct. 31st (injuring 11 more), entered the country]
• Cap the number of refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year
Spouses and unmarried minor children of citizens and legal permanent residents would still be admitted, but we’d put an end to unlimited chain migration.
As Cotton summarized ~
Add it all up and our annual immigrant pool would be younger, higher-skilled, and ready to contribute to our economy without using welfare, as more than half of immigrant households do today. No longer would we distribute green cards essentially based on random chance, nor would we import millions of unskilled workers to take jobs from blue-collar Americans and undercut their wages. And over a 10-year period, our annual immigration levels would decrease by half, gradually returning to historical norms.
The RAISE Act is so equitable and common-sensical that most Americans would no doubt support it 100% – IF they ever actually heard it discussed openly and honestly. But considering the elitist mentality in the halls of Congress, they never will. (It’s been sitting in committee since shortly after it was introduced.) Instead, our esteemed leaders will fold like cheap lawn chairs and pass some form of amnesty without any sort of meaningful reform. And we-the-sheeple will get screwed once again.
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Related:
Why Amnesty Should Not Be Part of Any ‘Deal’ on DACA
The RAISE Act: A Good Start on Immigration
