GOP Senator John Cornyn Negotiating Amnesty Deal for Illegal Aliens with Democrats

Breitbart News

Low estimate of 6.5 million legalized illegal aliens would dwarf the failed “one time” 1986 Republican amnesty of 2.8 million

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) confirmed this week that he is negotiating an amnesty deal for likely millions of illegal aliens with Senate Democrats.

In statements to PunchBowl News, Cornyn confirmed that he is hammering out the details of an expansive amnesty deal with Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) that could give green cards, and eventually American citizenship, to illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, those given Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and illegal aliens who work on farms.

“Right now, there’s a proposal to deal with DACA, a bipartisan border solutions bill, if there’s a deal to be had on farmworkers, and TPS recipients,” Cornyn told PunchBowl News this week. “I’m not sure where TPS figures in all this. But that’s the current proposal, so we’ll see if we can agree on some parameters for those three things: DACA [illegal aliens], [illegal alien] farmworkers, and the [southern] border.”

“I’ve agreed to focus on those three things and see if we can come up with some parameters that would make sense and that I can support,” Cornyn said.

Cornyn said he is hoping to have an amnesty deal drafted by the end of the week to send off to Durbin and other Senate Democrats.

In March, the Democrat-controlled House — with support from 30 House Republicans — passed H.R. 1603, known as the “Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2021,” and H.R. 6, known as “American Dream and Promise Act of 2021.”

Together, the two plans would give amnesty to about 2.1 million illegal aliens working on U.S. farms and another 4.4 million DACA-enrolled and eligible illegal aliens and those with TPS.

At the time, 17 Senate Republicans told Breitbart News they will oppose both amnesty plans, including:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
Sen. John Boozman (R-AR)
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN)
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS)
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)

The remaining 33 Senate Republicans have either not stated a clear position on amnesty or have not responded to requests for comments about whether they would support such a measure

While Cornyn negotiates an amnesty deal, many Senate Democrats are seeking to slip an amnesty past Congress through a little-known “reconciliation” maneuver. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is crafting a proposal that would include forcing American taxpayers to spend $150 billion on providing amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

An amnesty would come as nearly 16 million remain jobless but all of who want full-time jobs. Another 5.3 million Americans are underemployed but likewise, want full-time employment.

An analysis released this week by the Center for Immigration Studies revealed that amnesty for illegal aliens, which would immediately flood the U.S. labor market with millions of newly legalized foreign workers for whom employers can legally hire, would have a devastating impact on the nation’s ongoing unemployment problem. Read the rest here at Breitbart News.

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.