“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.” —George Washington (1783)

In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned and won his presidential bid in part on his promise to reform our immigration system. That reform included, finally, a wall on our southern border, and repeal of Barack Obama’s illegal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which ostensibly provided “temporary” deferral from deportation for those who entered the country illegally as minors but which was in fact a de facto amnesty.

On the heels of Trump’s remarkable first-year achievements — despite the Leftmedia’s all-out war on him — the president is now taking on immigration. His stated aim is to tackle border security, fix DACA, and end the ruinous “chain migration” and “diversity lottery” programs.

Democrats and Republicans have kicked this can down the road for decades, though the Trump administration has curbed illegal border crossings and illegal immigration in general. Not since President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” (yes, that was the name of Ike’s program to deport millions of illegal aliens) has any administration seriously dealt with illegal immigrants.

At present, it’s estimated that there are more than nine million illegal immigrants in the U.S., including more than eight million in the labor force. About 60% of these migrants crossed our borders illegally, and of those detained crossing our southern border in 2017, 58% were from 111 other countries other than Mexico. Some 40% of illegal aliens entered legally and overstayed their visa expirations. Of all illegal aliens, 60% reside in just six states, California and being the largest “host,” but Texas and Florida also topping the list – states where Democrats need to shift the electoral balance.

The financial drain on California is enormous.

There are many reasons why immigrants would want to flock to our great nation — but they are net consumers of taxpayer services, costing federal, state and local governments more than $8,000 per person annually. That totals more than $135 billion a year, primarily for “free” education ($46B), medical services ($29B), law enforcement ($23B) and welfare ($9B).

Of course, the human cost of violent assault and murders by illegal aliens is incalculable — and those apprehended now make up 22% of federal prison inmates. According to analysis of the U.S. Sentencing Commission by Tucker Carlson, “Non-citizens account for 22 percent, more than a fifth of all federal murder convictions, 29 percent of drug trafficking convictions and 72 percent of convictions for drug possession, 33 percent of money laundering convictions and 18 percent of fraud convictions. Meanwhile, the non-citizen percentage of the American people? About 7 percent.”

Illegal immigrants pay approximately $19 billion in taxes, and thus the net cost to American taxpayers is about $116 billion. The net taxpayer cost over the lifetime of an illegal immigrant laborer’s stay is approximately $231,000.

While the cost to taxpayers is important, the real issue is whether we are a nation defined by laws and borders or a nation defined by Democrat political agendas.

Among those who entered illegally, approximately 800,000 are so-called DREAMers, the aforementioned DACA illegals whose profile has been dutifully and shamelessly romanticized by the Leftmedia.

The Trump administration has rightfully rescinded the amnesty rollover for these illegal aliens but, predictably, a San Francisco district judge ruled the administration could not rescind the perpetual rollover of DREAMer deferrals, prompting the administration to bypass the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and take the case directly to the Supreme Court.

That judgment and appeal was timed to coincide with the administration’s negotiations on comprehensive immigration reform and the Democrats planned “government shutdown” on January 20th, which they will blame on Republicans as part of their 2018 midterm strategy to undermine all the good news Trump will deliver in his upcoming State of the Union Address.

In effect, Democrats are going to have to run against “peace and prosperity” in order to retake Congress this year.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had no chance of stopping House Republicans from approving a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown, which she describe thusly: “The GOP short-term resolution is like giving you a bowl of doggie doo, put a cherry on top, call it a chocolate sundae.” (“S—thole” v “Doggie Doo Sundae”? Unlike Trump’s alleged remark, Pelosi’s excrement reference was on the record!)

Pelosi went on to play the race card:“ "The [Republican immigration] plan is a campaign to make America white again. … They are changing the character of our country with what they are putting forth. They bring a tear to the eye of the Statue of Liberty and fear to the hearts of people who are here playing by the rules.” (Who exactly are the illegal immigrants “who are here playing by the rules”?)

In fact, there is no race case to be made, given that the top beneficiaries from the Republican plan are non-white immigrants: 850,000 Mexicans, 200,000 Indians and 100,000 from Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Bangladesh, the Philippines, China and even 50,000 from Haiti.

Leading the legislative obstacle to the Republican plan thus fell to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who became the titular head of the shutdown showdown over DACA, believing that Democrats could successfully blame the shutdown on Trump and the Republicans – but that calculation may be wrong this time around.

Recall that in 2013 when Republicans were holding up the budget for reform measures, Pelosi called them “legislative arsonists.”

Schumer followed up with this analogy: “No matter how strongly one feels about an issue, you shouldn’t hold millions of people hostage. … It’s sort of like this someone goes into your house and takes your wife and children hostage and then says let’s negotiate over the price of your house. We could do the same thing on immigration. We believe strongly in immigration reform. We could say were shutting down the government, we’re not going to raise the debt ceiling until you pass immigration reform. It would be chaos.”

He is most certainly not singing that tune now.

While the Trump administration has curbed illegal border crossings and illegal immigration, and is challenging so-called sanctuary cities and sanctuary states (currently estimated to be 675 jurisdictions), not to mention the anchor baby myth, comprehensive reform is a major hurdle.

House Republicans have delivered their immigration bill, encompassing much of what Trump is seeking, while the Democrat proposals will, of course, keep the floodgates open and cost taxpayers billions.

After the 2012 presidential election, Democrats began to change their tune on illegal immigration.

What’s behind the change?

A few years ago, when the Democrats were still feigning concern for their blue-collar and union worker constituencies, whose jobs and wages have been deflated by unchecked illegal immigration, they talked tough about illegal aliens. But their proposals were all smoke and mirrors. They routinely made fake political plays for Latino and Hispanic voters while pursuing policies that protected their traditional constituencies.

Now, however, as their lower- and middle-income voter blocs are hemorrhaging, the Democrat Party is turning its back on those traditionally supportive groups and opening a socialist voter pipeline to flood America with their most promising future constituency — Latinos. And labor union fat cats, whose member rolls have also been hemorrhaging, see these largely unskilled and low-wage immigrants as their future dues payers.

As clear evidence of that disingenuous shift, in a memo this week from Hillary Clinton’s former top campaign aide Jennifer Palmieri, who is now biding her time with the leftist Center for American Progress Action Fund, she insisted that the Democrat fight for DACA must be a “moral imperative,” adding moreover, “It is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.”

It’s almost as if Democrats believe their constituents are clueless as to what their dear leaders are saying. And, sadly, that’s a pretty fair and accurate description.

So, how best to disable the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to ensure Democrat’s “future electoral success”?

Trump’s alleged “s—thole” comment at last week’s Republican/Democrat immigration confab provided a great opening.

While Trump has a propensity to make inflammatory remarks that distract from his agenda, this time the Democrats and their Leftmedia propagandists masterfully seized on the alleged remark to undermine the administration’s immigration reform agenda.

The “s—thole” charade was orchestrated because the political future of the Democrat Party depends on the wholesale import of immigrants — a population Democrats label a “victim class,” which they can then exploit as a dependent identity constituency and a dependable voting bloc. As Democrats have veered further left, their working-class base has diminished. Rather than pivot their agenda back to the political center, they’ve doubled down on legal status for illegal immigrants, which is to say they’ve just been pandering to blue-collar Americans in order to maintain their power.

Thus, the most effective way to undermine Trump’s immigration and border security proposals, which puts the dreams of American citizens first, is to frame him as a “racist” and then cast his proposals as racist — which the Democrat race hustlers have done, in concert with their MSM amplifiers, ad nauseam.

So, while Democrats are on record as describing these countries as “hellholes” in order to justify keeping illegal immigrants here, when Trump allegedly uses the term “s—thole,” that makes him a racist? Trump’s remark, whatever its exact wording, was most assuredly related to the corrupt governments and moribund economies of those countries and not about their people.

That notwithstanding, Democrats now insist that words matter.

So let’s take a brief walk down memory lane and revisit some “racist” Democrat words on illegal immigration and border security.

Bill Clinton, in his 1995 State of the Union speech, had this to say about illegal immigration:

“All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in every place in this country 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. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”

Clinton reiterated these positions in the years that followed, justifying his position by insisting, “We are a nation of laws.” (Laughable, I know, given that the Democrats have a long history of preferring the rule of men over Rule of Law.)

And may I remind those Democrats now shedding all those fake crocodile tears on behalf of poor immigrants, about the case of a real refuge, little Elian Gonzalez, whose mother died in the shark-infested waters between Florida and communist Cuba to deliver her son to the shores of freedom.

Democrats ordered the child forcibly removed from his Miami relatives at gunpoint, and returned to his captive father on Castro’s island prison.

One of Trump’s most vociferous opponents of immigration reform and border security, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who now describes the Republicans’ immigration reform measures as “cruel and arbitrary,” had this to say when Clinton was president:

“Border control is a federal responsibility. We simply don’t enforce our borders adequately. In my state, we have about 2,000 people a day who illegally cross the border. Now this adds up to about two million people who compete for housing, who compete for classroom space. And we have a Medicaid situation. … There are well over 300,000 people [on Medicaid] who are illegal aliens. That presents obvious problems. … I think we can enforce our borders — I think we should enforce our borders. To have a situation where 40% of babies born on Medicaid … are born of illegal immigrants creates a very real problem for the state, which is in deficit. To have 17% of our prison population … be illegal immigrants who come here and commit felonies — that is not what this nation is all about.”

When asked why so little had been done on immigration over the previous 40 years, Feinstein declared:

“The numbers have escalated tremendously. … In Mexico, there is no welfare, there is no AFDC (food stamps), there is no Medicaid, there is no Social Security. … Mexico does nothing to enforce its border. In my view … Mexico must do its share. The day when America can be the welfare system for Mexico is gone. We simply can’t afford it. You’ve seen the costs to state and local governments. … It’s a competition for space, whether the space is a job, the space is a home, or the space is a seat in a classroom. … The people who should be here are those who come legally.”

A year later, Feinstein was joined at a press conference by then-fellow California Sen. Barbara Boxer and Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno. According to Boxer:

“You see before you three women who are very determined to solve the problem. … I look forward to working with [Reno] and my colleague to resolve this, to slow this illegal immigration to a trickle. … This [Clinton] administration is the first one to come up with many points on how to resolve this.”

Twelve years after Clinton’s 1995 SOTU, then-Sen. Barack Obama echoed his remarks, declaring:

“We agree on the need to better secure our border, and to punish employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants. We are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We simply cannot allow people to poor into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully, to become immigrants.”

As president, Obama insisted:

“We are a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable. When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system, and began to do what I could to secure our borders. Today our immigration system is broken and everybody knows it. … We will [add] additional [border] resources for our law enforcement personnel, so that they can stem the tide of illegal crossing and to speed the return of those who do cross over. If you are a criminal, you will be deported. … We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules.”

Obama added, “To those members of Congress who question my authority … or question my wisdom to act where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.”

And what about the Democrats’ latest failed attempt at securing the executive branch, Hillary Clinton? She has had a lot to say on the record, about illegal immigrants.

At the time of Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union remarks on immigration, his co-president declared, “We do not think comprehensive health care benefits should be extended to … illegal aliens. We do not want to do anything to encourage more illegal immigration.”

In 2003, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton declared, “I am adamantly against illegal immigrants. Certainly we have to do more at our borders.” In 2006 she reiterated, “What we need is to secure our borders.”

In 2008, then-presidential candidate Clinton insisted, “I do not think it is appropriate to give a driver’s license to someone who is here undocumented.”

In 2014, again-presidential candidate Clinton said on DACA, “We have to send a clear message — just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean your child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws.”

In 2015 she said, “I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.”

In 2016 she said, “In my first 100 days, I will introduce legislation for comprehensive immigration reform.”

Almost, but no cigar.

So what’s changed in the last two decades? Illegal immigration has now become a more significant burden on federal and state budgets, a greater threat to undermining wages and job opportunities for U.S. workers, and a national security threat – but the Democrats are hell-bent on opening that Latino pipeline to their most promising future constituency.

A day after the Beltway’s fake news flagship, Washington Post, reported Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-IL) alleged and disputed “s—thole” claim, the Bezos WaPo tabloid led with this “news”: “Trump’s comments about African countries and Haiti drew condemnation from around the world Friday, putting the White House and Republicans on the defensive while casting doubt on hopes of resolving disputes in the coming weeks over immigration legislation.”

No, the alleged comments reported as fact by WaPo and CNN drew condemnation … and cast doubts on immigration legislation — as intended. Mission accomplished, though there was no mention by CNN that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had this to say about Trump’s remark: “I love Trump because he tells Africans frankly. I don’t know whether he was misquoted or whatever. But he talks to Africans frankly. In the world, you cannot survive if you are weak.”

Trump responded to the Leftmedia “s—tstorm” with a “keen sense of the obvious” assessment: “I don’t believe the Democrats really want to see a deal on DACA.”

Of course they don’t.

Regarding his position on illegal immigration before the latest DACA challenge, Schumer previously declared: “People who enter the U.S. without our permission are illegal aliens, and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S. legally. … When we use phrases like ‘undocumented workers,’ we convey to the American people that their government is not serious about combatting illegal immigration. … I think it is illegal and wrong. … I biometric-based employer verification system with tough enforcement and auditing, is necessary to significantly diminish the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to the U.S. All illegal aliens present in the U.S. on the date of enactment of our bill, must register their presence with the U.S. government or face imminent deportation.”

Now, Democrats insist that even the combination of the words “illegal immigrant” is “very incendiary.”

As for who will be blamed for Schumer’s DACA shutdown, when Republican Senators shutdown the government in 2013 over funding for Obama’s so-called “Affordable Care Act,” Obama declared, “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election. Push to change it. But don’t break it. Don’t break what our predecessors spent over two centuries building. That’s not being faithful to what this country’s about. … Let’s be clear. There are no winners here. These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on our economy.”

As you recall, Republicans answered Obama’s challenge and did “go out there and win.” A year later in the 2014 midterm elections, the “Republican Wave” added nine Senate seats for a total of 54, retaking the majority, and gained 14 additional House seats, increasing their majority there to 247. They added two more Republican Governors, brining that total to 31 and picked up 11 more legislative chambers for a total of 68.

And in 2016…there was that unexpected Donald Trump victory…

However, in the present, now that Trump has been painted as a racist for proposing to sensibly reform our systemically dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, and protect our borders, Schumer taunted, “So I have a challenge for Donald Trump, okay? Actions speak louder than words. You want to begin, just begin, that long road back to proving you’re not a racist, you’re not bigoted? … Get the DREAMers safety here in America.”

Schumer, shedding more of those fake crocodile tears, laments: “The president’s decision to end DACA was heartless and it was brainless. Tens-of-thousands of businesses will lose hard-working employees.”

He even got some unsolicited support from former Republican president, W., who has bought into the left’s emotive appeals for “cotton-picking immigrants.”

Time to shut Schumer down, and for Bush to keep his cotton-picking immigrant opinions to himself.

Trump summed up the Democrat’s position: “The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now!”

As for the promise of immigration reform, it is down but not out. In the meantime, Republicans should stop painting all immigrants as “Democrat pawns,” and start endeavoring to win immigrant votes for Liberty, which attracted most immigrants to America.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776