During his Florida speech, President Trump pulled out all his fiery talking points related to job creation, a strong military, national security, sovereignty and slowing immigration that resonate with American voters.
President Trump is criticized for using this campaign-style rhetoric to inspire his base. But what the president’s detractors forget is that the issues he touted in Pensacola – a stronger economy, job growth and secure borders – resonate with blue-collar Democrats, the voting bloc that put him in the White House and could determine the 2018 mid-term elections, and his 2020 fate.
The response to the trip to the Sunshine State highlighted Washington, D.C.’s continuing ugly partisanship. The endless harangue about deferred action on childhood arrivals included a tedious threat to shut down the federal government unless amnesty is granted to the estimated 750,000 illegal alien DACAs. In a last-minute congressional agreement, the government funding deadline was kicked down the road two weeks to December 22.
The Internet is awash with misinformation about what DACA is, and what it would mean if included in the spending bill as a clean amnesty. For the beneficiaries, they’d be handsomely rewarded: lifetime work authorization, Social Security numbers, and legal status that would allow them to petition family members which, because of the chain migration multiplier, would add millions more to the foreign-born population in the U.S. The family members would also become work authorized.
DACAs aren’t the only group that would profit from the proposed amnesty. Without including E-Verify in a DACA deal, a demand congressional Republicans insist on, corporations score big time, too. Business can continue to employ and exploit illegal immigrants as they have consistently done at least since, if not before, President Ronald Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA made hiring illegal aliens a crime. Employers ignored the law, and the federal government slowed internal enforcement to a crawl. Congress prefers to talk tough about securing the border while it ignores employers’ lawbreaking.
Starting with President Reagan, and for four successive administrations after him, illegal immigrants have had little trouble crossing the border or getting jobs – 30 years of broken enforcement promises to Americans that enable rogue businesses to hire cheap labor.
Today, Congress has the gall to push for an unpopular DACA amnesty that rewards illegal immigrants with work permission. But according to a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll, just 17 percent of Americans think a DACA amnesty is important, and among Democrats, only 20 percent. Overall, a DACA amnesty ranks 12th among the 15 domestic issues Harvard polled.
Readers can confirm Harvard’s findings for themselves. At the next Christmas party, be Grinch and ask this question: “In an economy that has more than 10 million Americans looking for a full-time job, but unable to find one, a labor market that has more than 10 million American men and women unemployed, and 1.6 million long-term unemployed, should 750,000 DACAs get lifetime work authorization to compete with those struggling citizens?”
The answer will be a resounding no.
Joe Guzzardi is a Californians for Population Stabilization Senior Writing Fellow. Contact him at joeguzzardi@capsweb.org. Find him on Twitter @joeguzzardi19.
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