Beware Of Congressional Leaders Pushing ‘Compromise’ On Amnesty For Illegal Aliens

Ira Melhman

The Daily Caller

Nov. 29, 2021

“Among the many provisions of the wildly expensive so-called Build Back Better (BBB) Act that is now before the Senate is one that would grant de facto amnesty to an estimated 7 million illegal aliens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that such a provision would add $115 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade.”

“Grizzled political veterans like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have learned that the best way to sell unpopular policies is to convince us that everyone else is as unhappy about it as we are. In the sometimes surreal world that exists inside the Beltway, a good piece of legislation is one that leaves everyone feeling like they got a raw deal.

Occasionally, on matters where public opinion is pretty evenly divided, a compromise that gives everyone a little of what they want in exchange for a little of what they don’t want has some merit. But no matter how hard Capitol Hill dealmakers try to spin, extolling the virtues of a grand compromise is not justified when a small minority gets a lot of what they want, while the vast majority gets nothing at all.

Among the many provisions of the wildly expensive so-called Build Back Better (BBB) Act that is now before the Senate is one that would grant de facto amnesty to an estimated 7 million illegal aliens. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that such a provision would add $115 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade (not an insignificant sum, even in an era where trillion price tags no longer induce sticker shock). Beyond the CBO’s ten-year scoring, the costs of a mass amnesty would likely run into the trillions.

For these and other reasons, the amnesty provisions of the BBB have very little public support. They also provide nothing of value to the American people, especially at a time when 80% of the public, according to a Harvard-Harris poll, believes that our record-setting levels of new illegal immigration are a serious problem, and 65% believe that policies put in place by the slender Democratic majority are encouraging more illegal immigration. While the BBB offers legal presence and work permits to millions of people who broke our laws, it does not even make the pretense of controlling future illegal immigration that four out of five Americans see as a serious problem.

Undoubtedly, as the bill is taken up by the Senate, Majority Leader Schumer will make much of the fact that the immigration provisions do not give amnesty advocates everything they are demanding. Hence, he will declare it to be a noble compromise and a shining example of the way the system is supposed to work. With the help of the media, he will gloss over the obvious fact that 80 percent of the American people are getting nothing they want, while the 20 percent who support amnesty and open borders are getting much of what they want.

In order for the ruse to work, Schumer must be able to demonstrate just how unhappy he is making the small segment of the public that wants unconditional amnesty for every illegal alien in the county. He seems to have that covered. In a letter addressed to Schumer and other Senate leaders last week, 91 House Democrats (representing, appropriately enough, 21% of the American public) complained that the immigration provisions approved in that chamber’s version of BBB do not go nearly far enough in rewarding illegal aliens. Even though there is virtually no chance that ostensibly temporary immigration benefits once extended would ever be repealed, they demand that the Senate version include an immediate pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens.

The signatories know full-well that the Senate parliamentarian has already rejected attempts to include a full-blown amnesty as part of a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill, and that even an amnesty thinly disguised as a temporary reprieve will be a heavy lift. But that’s not the point…

More here.

Center for Immigration Studies

DREAMers’ are just the bait; “citizenship for all 11 million, or however many” illegal aliens there are here is the hoo

By Andrew R. Arthur on November 17, 2022

On November 16, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) held a press conference in front of the Capitol in which he called for amnesty for “DREAMers”, aliens brought illegally to the United States as children. As he did so, however, he pulled back the curtain on his end game – to “get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here”. The DREAMers are the bait, while a full and total amnesty is the hook.

DREAMers, In Brief. Amnesty legislation for aliens who arrived in their youth has a long, but not particularly successful pedigree. Here’s a brief recap.

In August 2001, then-Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced a bipartisan “DREAM Act”, which included 18 cosponsors. That bill would have granted amnesty to aliens unlawfully present for five years who entered under the age of 21, and who met certain work and educational requirements.

The timing of that bill could not have been worse, because less than six weeks later, the September 11 attacks showed how foolhardy such blanket amnesties were. Nonetheless, similar “DREAM Acts” were subsequently introduced in later Congresses.

One bears special note. In March 2009, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) offered up the “DREAM Act of 2009” during the 111th Congress.

At that time, Barack Obama was president, Democrats held an overwhelming majority in the House, and from September 24, 2009 (when Democrat Paul Kirk was appointed to fill the seat of the late Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy) through February 4, 2010 (when Republican Scott Brown was elected to fill Kennedy’s seat), Democrats held a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats in the Senate.

Obama’s fellow Democrats could have passed any bill they wanted – including and in particular the DREAM Act of 2009 – without any Republican votes at all. But that bill went nowhere. Cosponsor and then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) did not even bring it up for a vote in committee.

That said, two Republican senators – Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) – were cosponsors of the DREAM Act of 2009, so they probably would have blocked a filibuster even during the months Democrats only controlled a measly 59 seats in the upper chamber.

Obama blamed Republicans for the failure to pass a DREAM Act, but the fault really lies with him and congressional Democrats alone – DREAM Act legislation simply was not a priority for a party that held a hammerlock on the legislative process.

The popularity of legislation to “protect” the DACA population has been a key talking point for years (I was the punching boy for Democrats at a House hearing on the issue in March 2019), but let’s face it – if it really were all that popular, it would have been a shoo-in in the 111th Congress.

DACA. The failure of DREAM Act legislation led to a program called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” or DACA. It grants quasi-legal status to aliens who entered the United States while under the age of 16 before June 15, 2007, who are currently under the age of 41, who meet certain educational standards, and have not been convicted of certain crimes.

DACA was not created by Congress, or even by executive order or executive action (for what that is worth). It’s the product of a memo issued by then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on June 15, 2012. In my considered legal opinion, Napolitano lacked the authority to create DACA (the Fifth Circuit ruled in October that the program is unlawful, but the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in), but in any event, it sets a bad precedent.

Want proof? Here’s what the editorial board of the Washington Post had to say when President Obama was considering expanding DACA to include parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents in 2014:

The president should think twice. Some of the same Democrats and pro-immigrant advocates urging him to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation would be outraged if a Republican president took a similarly selective approach to enforcing the laws — say, those that guarantee voting rights or prohibit employment discrimination.

Obama ignored the Post editorial board and created something called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). DAPA proved to be a bridge too far for Texas and several other states, who successfully sued to block its implementation.

Despite all of this, DACA continues, and the Biden administration recently issued a new rule, effective October 31, “to preserve and fortify” the decade-old program.

A Sympathetic Population. The DACA population is admittedly sympathetic. The vast majority of the approximately 650,000 current DACA beneficiaries were removable a decade ago, but in the intervening years they have been living in a quasi-legal status thanks to some questionable administrative actions.

Even President Trump, in his 2018 State of the Union address, offered up a plan to legalize not just DACA recipients but also a total of 1.8 million “DACA-eligible” aliens – more or less the same individuals covered by the DREAM Act…. please read the rest here at the CIS website.