The Patriot Post® · Amnesty vs. America First

Last Sunday night at the Tony Awards show, actor Robert De Niro spewed out one of the principal Democrat Party planks for the 2018 midterm elections. Two others are their intent to raise taxes and [impeach] President Donald Trump for some yet-to-be-discovered offense. One might think this toxic combination would spell doom for a party whose once-vaunted “blue wave” had actually flipped in favor of the GOP. Unfortunately, Republicans aren’t called the “Stupid Party” for no reason. In a push utterly antithetical to conservative voters, the GOP will bring a couple of bills to the House floor for a vote next week — and amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers is part of the agenda.

Columnist Chris Pandolfo reveals exactly where Republicans stand on the issue. “Aside from a handful of stalwart holdouts, most of the Republican Party in Congress agrees that amnesty with citizenship will happen for DACA recipients,” he explains. “The split between moderates and conservatives seems to hang on whether an immigration compromise contains a ‘special pathway.’ Conservatives want to treat DACA recipients like normal immigrants, permitting them to use the current law to obtain citizenship, while moderates want to fast-track citizenship for them.”

What makes the latter different from what Democrats want is anyone’s guess.

Moreover, the GOP’s refusal to distinguish themselves from Democrats should surprise no one. The party that should be offering Americans a wholly different agenda is the one that made 2014 election promises to thwart Barack Obama’s socialist and unconstitutional agenda — including his executive order on DACA — and then broke them. The 50-plus times the GOP-controlled House voted to repeal ObamaCare, knowing Obama could veto any attempt to do so, was also revealed as a fraudulent effort by their failure to kill it when they had complete control of Congress and the presidency. So was their promise to defund Planned Parenthood. And their passage of a massive, debt-filled omnibus bill revealed their assertions that they’re the party of fiscal responsibility are absurd.

“This is a difficult issue,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters a week ago, following efforts to contain those in favor of a “discharge petition” that would have forced the House to engage in a floor vote on series of immigration bills. “We’re trying to figure out what the sweet spot is.”

That petition, based on a “queen of the hill” rule would have set up votes on four immigration measures, with the one receiving the most votes above a simple majority prevailing. It was being pushed by the aforementioned moderate Republicans and was designed to bypass House leadership. Ryan managed to maneuver past it, but the House will bring a pair of immigration bills to the floor for a vote next week to “resolve the border security and immigration issues,” stated Ryan spokesperson AshLee Strong in an email.

Nonetheless, those moderate Republicans remain committed to working with Democrats, and amnesty coupled with a pathway to citizenship remains their primary objective.

Why? “The latest push for an amnesty is being driven by business groups who oppose the modest wage raises that are happening in President Donald Trump’s high-pressure economy, which is forcing companies to bid up workers’ wages in a tight labor market,” reveals columnist Neil Munro.

They are being led by the pro-amnesty billionaire Koch Brothers who are spending more than a million dollars in national television and digital ads pushing amnesty, despite its unpopularity among Republican voters. “Elected officials must stop thinking about this as a campaign issue,” insisted James Davis, president of the Koch Network’s PR firm. “This is an avoidable crisis; we’re only here because of Washington’s failure to act.”

Davis is right in one respect. Immigration, both legal and illegal, is far more than a campaign issue. It is the ultimate dividing line between elitists who believe the nation-state is an anachronistic concept, and ordinary Americans who have borne the ravages of porous borders and decades of wage stagnation. Between those who champion sanctuary cities and a host of benefits like drivers’ licenses, in-state college tuition and health care benefits for illegal aliens, and those who believe in the Rule of Law and an end to illegal immigration, chain migration and anchor babies. It is between elitists who reap the “net plus” of a world economy, while the net minuses accrue in hollowed out American cities and towns in the middle of a nation the bicoastal elitists dismiss as “flyover country.”

Tragically — and quite revealingly — less than half of one political party stands up for those ordinary Americans.

“As Democrats have moved increasingly in the direction of an amnesty-only approach to illegal immigration, Republicans at the federal and state level have succeeded by promising voters real immigration enforcement,” columnist Ira Mehlman explains. “Running on that platform, Republicans captured both houses of Congress and the White House in 2016.”

So why would they do a complete flip-flop and reward wholesale lawbreaking in 2018? There are two possible reasons. One is rank cynicism. When the choice in the midterms is between a socialist/Marxist Democrat Party that embraces overt hatred and hysteria as a political platform, and a Chamber of Commerce-beholden Republican Party that embraces rank hypocrisy and the routine betrayal of its core constituency, the lesser of two evils remains in play.

The other possibility is far more chilling. It is quite possible that Democrats and Republicans showcase their differences solely for public consumption, and that America is run by a Ruling Class managing a singular, public-be-damned globalist agenda. Such a possibility goes a long way toward explaining why we have ever-increasing levels of debt, an increasingly amoral culture, a increasingly two-tiered “justice” system — and the ongoing march toward amnesty — regardless of which party controls Congress and the presidency.

Where is the wall? Where is merit-based immigration? Where is E-verify? If they exist in any incarnation in the bills Republicans bring to the House floor next week, it is quite likely they’ll either be at the back of the line behind amnesty and a “pathway to citizenship,” or watered down to the point of virtual impotency — despite the fact that every poll showing Americans favor amnesty only if such requirements and other are met.

Donald Trump was elected largely on his immigration agenda, which was many things. But first and foremost, it was a repudiation of a globalist status quo that dismissed anyone who stood against it as a “populist” — along with the subliminal message that such populism was akin to Nazism. It was a repudiation of the idea that Americans are just another nation of people in a world full of them, no more or less exceptional (and just as expendable) as any other — making it wholly unnecessary to address their needs above and before anyone else’s.

And just as much as anything else, it was a repudiation of the insufferable political correctness used like a club to keep the burgeoning discontent in check.

Ryan claims Trump backs a compromise immigration plan. So do a lot of Americans. But if rock-solid enforcement of the law and air-tight border security aren’t the primary parts of any plan, it is highly unlikely our “America First” president will eviscerate his own agenda.

In a word, that would be “deplorable.”