Up until a few years ago, the Democratic leadership was willing to pretend that they would support enhanced immigration enforcement in exchange for amnesty for illegal aliens. No more. The mere rumor that the White House is working on a deal that includes construction of the border fence, more detention for illegal border-crossers, and mandatory E-Verify in exchange for a DREAM Act amnesty, now evokes righteous indignation from the Democratic leadership.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) flatly rejected the idea. “Dreamers are not a bargaining chip for the border wall and inhumane deportation. Period,” he tweeted. (For the record, Schumer voted in favor of the border wall in 2006.) On the other side of the Hill, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was even more adamant, asserting that it is “reprehensible to treat children as bargaining chips…Dreamers are not negotiable.”
And those were the cooler heads weighing in. The George Soros-funded amnesty mob responded with outright militancy. The Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) railed against the suggestion that our immigration laws should be enforced. The enforcement measures in the rumored deal are “nothing more than a wish list for xenophobes that holds 800,000 DREAMers hostage in an attempt to execute their ethnic cleansing agenda,” they charged in a press release.
In retrospect, these responses from the Democratic leadership and the massively funded amnesty lobby highlight just how important the defeat of the Gang of Eight bill was. Schumer, Pelosi, et al, never had the slightest intention of honoring any of the bill’s promises of future enforcement. Quite frankly, many in the Republican leadership were just pretending too.
Luckily, the American public was not willing to fall for this con. This time around, the Democratic leadership isn’t even trying to con us. Amnesty is now, as Ms. Pelosi put it, a non-negotiable demand.