• • ALERT TODAY: No Amnesty
• • Video Immigration Brief: The Cost of a DACA Amnesty
• • DACA, DACA, Bo-Baca ...

Some in Congress say their top priority for January is DACA amnesty. Really? Was that what President Trump promised? 

Democrats are again threatening a government shutdown while insisting on attaching an unconditional DREAM Act amnesty to the spending bill that must be passed by Jan. 19. At the same time, key Republicans are letting us down by pushing for a standalone package that pairs a DACA amnesty with meaningless enforcement provisions.

We need to put their heads on straight. What about securing our borders, protecting American jobs, ending chain migration, and stopping dangerous sanctuary cities? These are the priorities of the American people, not amnesty.

The stakes couldn't be any higher. Unless YOU speak up, the same thing could happen that has happened before: illegal aliens get amnesty, while we get empty promises of weak enforcement.

We make it easy for you.  Click HERE to send a message to your Senators and your congressman. It is VITAL that they hear from you.  Please pass this alert on to friends and family.

Out of state subscribers can find their Senators HERE.
Out of state subscribers can find their Congressmen HERE.

Top

The myth of an amnesty benefiting taxpayers

By Steven A. Camarota and Bryan Griffith on January 8, 2018

As the termination date for the unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program approaches, congressional leaders continue to look for a resolution. Any resolution must take into account the cost of an amnesty for this generally low-education, low-skilled population. Dr. Steven Camarota, CIS director of research, discusses the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, which estimated a cost of $26 billion for a "Dreamer" amnesty.

Top

The prospects of an amnesty deal are fading.

National Review, January 5, 2017

President Trump met Thursday with Senate Republicans about a possible deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, President Obama's lawless pen-and-phone amnesty that gave two-year renewable work permits to certain illegal aliens who arrived before age 16. There are about 700,000 of them, and the six-month grace period that President Trump gave them after canceling the program in September is fast running out.

There are three clusters of issues at play here.

DACA or Dream? First, what is the universe of people being considered for an amnesty? As I've noted here previously, there's a tendency - inadvertent in some, intentional in others - to conflate the DACA population of perhaps 700,000 illegal aliens who have Obama work permits with the much larger group of "Dreamers," which, depending on the bill, could add up to more than three million people. The point of such conflation by those who know what they're doing is to use the smaller DACA group as a wedge to sneak through a multimillion-person amnesty.

Just this week, three former DHS secretaries under Bush and Obama (Chertoff, Napolitano, and Johnson) contributed to this strategy by publishing a pro-amnesty open letter that uses "Dream" and "DACA" synonymously.

Green Cards or Work Permits? The second issue is what kind of amnesty would the DACA people (or Dreamers) get? Would they simply have their current status formalized, so that they have work permits but are not formal permanent residents on track for citizenship? Or would they eventually be upgraded to regular permanent residency - green-card status? This matters, because some politicians try to pretend that whatever amnesty they're pitching at the time isn't really an amnesty if it doesn't result in green cards (and eventual access to citizenship and voting).

A work-permit amnesty would be a mistake for two reasons. Trying to deny that it's an amnesty should fool no one. Ever since this tactic was widely deployed during the Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty push over a decade ago, anyone with a scintilla of political awareness knows that a politician who says "This isn't an amnesty" is actually pushing an amnesty. Anything that lets an illegal alien stay legally is an amnesty, and we might as well just admit it.

Top

The DACA Myth

The public narrative surrounding the unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is that it was put in place by the Obama administration to protect "kids" who were brought here through no fault of their own.¹ Proponents of the DACA program implied that applicants were almost universally Hispanic² and that as poverty-stricken citizens of Latin American republics a short distance away from the wealthy and successful United States, their parents' decision to violate U.S. immigration laws was somehow legitimate.³ They were also portrayed as brilliant "valedictorians" and proud "members of the military."

In the wake of the Trump administration's decision to end the DACA program, political leaders from both parties have said that it would be cruel to deport anyone covered by the DACA program because these "incredible kids" would unable to assimilate if sent back to their country of birth⁴ - after all the U.S. was "the only home they had ever known."⁵
 

The DACA "Kids" Who Were Actually Grownups

From the outset, much of that narrative rang hollow. In a column for the Washington Post, Mickey Kaus described it as public-relations-style "hooey."⁶ Here's why:

• Many of the DACA "kids" were not brought here as young children. Instead they were smuggled into the United States as "tweens" (ages 8-12) and teenagers.⁷
• A large number of DACA applicants weren't "brought" here by anyone - they crossed the border themselves: