Last weekend, the Democrats in the Senate refused to vote for a Continuing Resolution to fund the US government.
Why ? Because they wanted a law to legalize the thousands of illegal aliens in a status called “DACA” or Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was an American immigration policy that allowed some individuals who entered the country as minors, and had either entered or remained in the country illegally, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work permit.
Thus these illegal aliens were given the right to remain and to work in this country. Why ?
The policy was established by executive action rather than legislation; however, participating individuals were sometimes referred to as Dreamers after the DREAM Act bill, a bipartisan bill first proposed in 2001 that was the first of a number of subsequent bills in the U.S. House and Senate attempting to provide a pathway to citizenship or other legal status for certain undocumented residents who immigrated illegally as children and subsequently completed some college or military service.[2]
This is mostly a myth.
Victor Davis Hanson explains some of the mythology.
College graduation and military service are often referenced as DACA talking points. In truth, some studies suggest that just one in 20 dreamers graduated from college. One in a 1,000 has served in the military. So far, about eight times more Dreamers have not graduated from high school than have graduated from college.
I examine military applicants and am unaware of any “Dreamers.”
Then again, are the DACA people just 700,000 ? Or are they millions ?
To be eligible, illegal immigrants must have entered the United States before their 16th birthday and prior to June 2007, be currently in school, a high school graduate or be honorably discharged from the military, be under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, and not have been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or three other misdemeanors, or otherwise pose a threat to national security. The program does not provide lawful status or a path to citizenship,[39] nor does it provide eligibility for federal welfare or student aid.
They are widely eligible for free college education or, at least, to be given resident status for tuition.
Many of these people entered as “Unaccompanied Minors. “
A significant number are teenaged gangsters like the MS 13 gangs in Maryland and Virginia.
Almost one-third of 214 U.S.-based MS-13 gang members arrested in an international sweep were invited into the United States by President Barack Obama’s “Unaccompanied Alien Children” policy.
The successful “Raging Bull’ sweep was announced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Deputy Director Tom Homan in a joint press conference at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
Millions are fleeing paradigms that they apparently judged as wanting, either politically, economically, or socially, or all that and more. Why, then, would foreign nationals have ceased romanticizing their new generous hosts upon their arrival and begun idealizing, instead, their rejected birthplace? And if these are their true feelings on the matter, why did they leave?
Second, there rarely is expressed any formal analysis of why one wishes to enter the United States and leave one’s home country.
What, then, exactly makes a naturally rich Mexico rather poor and naturally poor New Mexico rather rich? Why is Venezuela a mess and Colorado is not? Has anyone prohibited Mexico from reformatting its constitution to ensure an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a free-market economy, the protection and free sale of private property, a bill of rights, unfettered free speech, a meritocratic civil service, transparency in law enforcement, and an ethnically blind culture?
The “Dreamer” group of illegals may, in fact, number in the millions and we must be vigilant to ensure that any compromise on immigration is limited to the most attractive segment. The DACA group may simply be the front for millions of unemployable peasants, many of whom do not even speak Spanish, let alone English.
Trump seems to have outmaneuvered the Democrats last weekend. Their quick collapse on the shutdown may indicate that they misjudged the public. The hard left among them resent the quick surrender by their leadership.
Many Democrats are incensed about the deal Senate Democrats reached with Republicans on Monday, the third day of a shutdown, to reopen the government.
On Monday, a bipartisan group of senators — including 33 Democrats — led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reached an agreement to fund the government until February 8.
The senators agreed to the deal in exchange for a promise from the GOP to vote on legislation to codify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation about 700,000 undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers and is set to expire on March 5.
But many Democratic lawmakers and activists, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, denounced the deal, arguing that Democrats couldn’t trust Republican leaders to fulfill their promises on immigration, the issue at the heart of the disagreement between the parties.
Harris, a likely 2020 presidential candidate who voted against the deal, said McConnell’s promise on DACA “fell far short of the ironclad guarantee” she needed “to support a stopgap spending bill.”
They will try to get a better deal on illegal immigration next time but they should be refused. The next shutdown may be longer.
Trump needs to be strong on this issue and resist the weak kneed Lindsey Grahams.
Sens. Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin, who presented a compromise immigration plan to Trump, called out the President’s staff, saying they are blocking a deal.
“This has turned into an s-show and we need to get back to being a great country,” Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
At one point, Graham even spoke directly to Trump, as if he was watching, to appeal to him to reconsider his rejection of their bipartisan proposal on immigration and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Graham and Durbin are a pair of liars. They need to be ignored. There are red state Democrats who are not willing to die for illegal immigration.