RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maybe an immigration compromise isn’t hopeless in 2018 after all. That’s at least a possibility after the White House floated a proposal on Capitol Hill late Thursday that would offer legalization and a path to citizenship for some 800,000 so-called Dreamers in return for funding for President Trump’s wall at the Mexico-U.S. border and other changes to U.S. immigration law.

The details weren’t fully known by our deadline Thursday, but the outline has something for both sides. Democrats would get legal protection for the Dreamers, the young adults brought here illegally as children. They could also become U.S. citizens over time, which makes sense given that this is the only country they have known for nearly all of their lives. Democrats claim to care for the well-being of these people, and this is a big concession by the President given opposition from some on the right.

Those restrictionists would get funding for the wall, which Mr. Trump campaigned on. The White House proposal also includes limits on the ability of citizens to bring adult siblings or parents into the U.S., as well as an end to the lottery program that awards 50,000 visas a year to countries that typically don’t have many immigrants.

These concessions would substantially limit the number of legal immigrants, and thus a source of talent, but we recognize that compromise is needed to break the veto that both sides have held over immigration policy for so many years. Credit Mr. Trump with recharging the chances for a deal after much recent acrimony.

Who’s the racist who once said this: “All Americans . . . are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers”?

Who’s the racist who once said this: “When I see Mexican flags waving at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When I’m forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration”?

If you guessed the last two Democratic presidents — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively — then you’re correct. If you believe their own party would excoriate them for the same words if they uttered them today, then you’re also correct. It’s time to acknowledge that the Democratic position on immigration has moved rapidly and decisively to the left, so rapidly and decisively that internal progressive debates that were common even a few years ago are settled. Over. To some activists, good-faith dissent from the new position simply isn’t possible. It’s proof positive that you’re racist.

Indeed, this change is so rapid and so dramatic that thoughtful liberals are taking note. Last summer Peter Beinart wrote a long piece in The Atlantic chronicling the transformation. The party platform substantially changed. Politicians like Bernie Sanders were browbeaten into backing an ever-more open-borders position. Beinart talked to Jason Furman, the former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic advisers. “A decade ago or two ago,” Furman said, “Democrats were divided on immigration. Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides.”

The Department of Justice threatened to subpoena 23 jurisdictions across the country if they fail to answer questions about their lawless “sanctuary” policies that shield illegal aliens, a move that prompted left-wing big city mayors to boycott a White House meeting.

“I continue to urge all jurisdictions under review to reconsider policies that place the safety of their communities and their residents at risk,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement.

“Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law. We have seen too many examples of the threat to public safety represented by jurisdictions that actively thwart the federal government’s immigration enforcement—enough is enough.”

The subpoena threat comes as federal prosecutors consider filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary cities.

“The Department of Justice is reviewing what avenues might be available,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told a Senate panel Jan. 16. “The context of this is of course not only putting my ICE officers at risk but also finding an efficient and effective way to enforce our immigration laws,” Nielsen said.

The sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism “civil liberties safe zones” to describe sanctuary jurisdictions. The phrase blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) advocacy as altruistic when in fact it was designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its ongoing Resistance movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy the capitalist infrastructure of American democracy through deceitful immigration reforms. This is how it works.

DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was the 2012 product of Obama’s illegal executive overreach. The lesser known DAPA Deferred Action for Parents of Americans was Obama’s 2014 expansion program that legalized illegal alien parents whose children became legal American citizens through birthright citizenship.

Amnesty programs for illegal immigrants guaranteed Democrat votes but Obama had a problem selling the idea to Congress even though Democrats had control of both Houses. Illegal aliens needed a new image. No problem for Obama – his Leftist image-makers went to work.

Soon illegal aliens became undocumented aliens, then undocumented workers, then unauthorized immigrants, then undocumented immigrants, and finally the loftiest brand of them all – Dreamers. Obama’s rebranded illegal aliens were transformed into Dreamers and protecting them was merchandised as the humanitarian imperative for America. Millennials signed on in droves but here is the problem.

Rebranding is a marketing tool used by advertisers to sell products that don’t sell. Rebranding changes the name but it does not change the product. Dreamers are still illegal aliens. So why would Obama resort to executive overreach to sell rebranded illegal immigration?? Because Obama needed the positive image of Dreamers to sell DACA and DAPA as altruistic programs when they were actually deceitful Democrat power-grabs designed to tip red states blue. It was always about the votes.

Starting on April 1, 2018, illegal aliens in California who have recently obtained state driver’s licenses legally, or obtained them previously by lying about their immigration status, will automatically be registered to vote. Since January 2015, according to the California DMV, A.B. 60, a law passed by the California Assembly, “allows illegal immigrants to the United States to apply for a California driver’s license with the CA Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)” [emphasis original]. As of December 2016, more than 800,000 California driver’s licenses were issued to illegal aliens under the A.B. 60 law. Additional thousands of illegals may have been granted licenses prior to 2015 because they lied on their driver’s license application forms and claimed they were in the country legally. (No proof of legal residence has been required by the California DMV in recent years.)

An editorial in the Victorville Daily Press on January 22 summarized the situation:

According to the [s]ecretary of [s]tate’s website, in order to vote in California one must be at least 18 years old, a United States citizen[,] and a resident of California.

But a court settlement Jan. 10 in response to a suit filed by the League of Women Voters [and several other groups including The National Council of La Raza] may have pushed open the door to rampant voter fraud in this state. That’s because under the settlement, starting in April the Department of Motor Vehicles will automatically register to vote all those who renew their driver’s licenses unless they opt out.

California Political Review and Courthouse News first broke the story of illegals being allowed to vote starting this spring on January 18 in an article titled “Alert: Starting April 1 California DMV Will AUTOMATICALLY Register Illegal Aliens to Vote – by COURT ORDER:”

According to the those on the political Left, America has always been a nation of, by, and for immigrants, in terms undefined, unregulated, and unlimited. But inclusive rhetoric is a recent development in U.S. immigration policy, one that stands in stark contrast with our nation’s former longstanding practice of prudent, selective immigration.

Progressives seem to forget it was Democrat Ted Kennedy, on the eve of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, who assured an uneasy Congress that “our streets will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually.” Turns out there were 1.8 million immigrants in 2016 alone. That line didn’t age well, did it?

Kennedy promised the bill “will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.”

Some might say Kennedy was tacitly mollifying a concern about America being overwhelmed with immigrants from what, based on desperately impoverished conditions therein, might be considered “shithole” countries. There’s nothing inherently wrong with what Kennedy said. Nations have the right to regulate immigration, after all.

“Complicit” With What Now?
But how would Senator Cory Booker react to those remarks today? I can’t see Booker slamming Kennedy like he did Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, whom he likened to a Nazi enabler when she failed to rebuke President Trump’s remark that she didn’t hear, because she wasn’t in the room.

Neilsen, the consummate professional, remained calm against Booker’s tirade. “I decline to spend any more of my time responding other than to say the obvious—I did not and will not lie under oath and say I heard something I didn’t,” Nielsen said.

How principled, genuine even, of Nielsen—Lindsey Graham could learn a thing or two from her. Booker was left with his “tears of rage” at Neilsen’s “complicity” in enabling a racist America wherein we do the unthinkable: control our borders, enforce immigration laws, dictate who may immigrate, and upon which conditions they may remain.

The illegal immigration debate has come to a head once again. Congress remains at an impasse over a temporary spending bill that Senate Democrats refuse to support unless it includes a provision that would allow several hundred thousand illegal aliens to remain in the United States without fear of deportation. It’s a tiresome ploy by the Democrats, abetted by their allies in the media, using deceptive language to paint a false picture that blurs the distinction between legal and illegal, citizen and foreigner, justice and injustice.

Enough obfuscation. Here are some of the most pernicious myths of illegal immigration, debunked.

The System is “Broken”
Broken for whom exactly? Not for Mexico and Latin America. Together they garner $50 billion in annual remittances. The majority of such transfers are likely sent from illegal aliens.

Some of that largess is also subsidized by the entitlements American taxpayers pay that free up this disposable cash for sending abroad. In the eyes of Mexico and Latin America, the only thing that would make our system appear “broken” would be enforcing existing U.S. immigration law.

Or perhaps “broken” would be defined as novel ways of paying for Trump’s wall—by either taxing remittances or so discouraging illegal immigration that a reduction of dollar outflows could be counted (at least rhetorically) as down payments on border construction.

The immigration system is also clearly not broken for the Democratic Party. It has turned California blue. It soon will do the same to Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, and someday may flip Arizona and Texas.

If the statist, redistributionist, and identity politics principles of the Democrats no longer appeal to 51 percent of the electorate, then why would they give up on the annual investment in nearly hundreds of thousands of new arrivals that by some means, and in the not too distant future, would translate into loyal, politically predictable voters for whom this approach to politics is second nature?

Employers believe the system is anything but broken. Any good news for the country about skyrocketing minority employment numbers is likely to be bad news for them if it means declining numbers of cheaper illegal aliens to hire. Open borders have ensured the hiring of industrious workers at cheap wages while passing on the accruing health, educational, legal, and criminal justice costs to the taxpayer. The present system is “working” well enough for this crowd; its possible replacement instead would be defined as “broken.”

Ethnic tribunes support illegal immigration. If the border were closed and the melting pot allowed to work, the façade of identity politics would vanish in a generation.

Recently added accents would be dropped. Hyphenated names would disappear. Trilled r’s would become rare. La Raza/Chicano/Latino Studies programs would become about as popular as Basque or Portuguese. If immigrants from Mexico came in measured numbers, legally, with high-school diplomas, and along with diverse immigrants from all over the world, then rapid assimilation and integration would soon render them politically individuals, not tribes. Someone like California Senate Leader Kevin de León (born Kevin Alexander Leon) would never have needed a preposition and an accent mark.

Broken? More likely, most welcomed.

There is a bit of sage advice that warns, “Look before you leap.”

Motorists are also warned to not attempt to drive through a flooded street because it may be impossible to know the depth of the water.

Those warnings certainly apply to any politician, President Trump included, who may be inclined to reach a compromise on DACA.

It has been estimated by the DHS that about 800,000 illegal aliens have enrolled in DACA. The media and advocates for legalizing these aliens repeatedly describe them as having been brought here as children who, supposedly, had no control over their situation.

Most folks are not aware that in order to qualify, these aliens had to claim that they entered the United States prior to their 16th birthdays but could have applied to participate in this program if they did so prior to their 31st birthday. Today those aliens may be as old as 36 years of age.

Now, reportedly, the administration is seeking a compromise to deal with these aliens who will begin losing their temporary protection from deportation on March 5th.

However, in the parallel world of Washington, DC, what you see may not be what you get.

On January 18, 2018 USA Today reported, “There are 3.6M ‘DREAMers’ — a number far greater than commonly known.”

That estimate, according to USA Today, was provided by the Migration Policy Institute.

Advocates for legalization of DACA aliens, who enrolled in the Obama program, are also now demanding that any aliens who claim they would have qualified as “DREAMERS” and claim they entered the United States before their 18th birthdays be granted lawful status as well.

Durbin is seeking a massive legalization program through extortion, holding the U.S. government and Americans hostage.

The December 4, 2018 Chicago Tribune report, Durbin rallying support for Dream Act, included this sentence:

The Dream Act would grant “conditional permanent residency” to an estimated 1.8 million immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before age 18 and can meet requirements similar to those under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.