Since President Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September, Democrats slammed him as an anti-immigrant racist. So, when the White House released its framework for immigration reform, including an amnesty for the 700,000 beneficiaries and 1.8 million “other DACA-eligible illegal immigrants,” surely that should have been music to their ears.
Democrats said DACA was an urgent matter and important enough to them to shut down the government. But when push came to shove, they showed a political issue held greater value to them than the so-called Dreamers.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded via Twitter that by ending DACA, Trump had “subjected 800k Dreamers to deportation” and now wanted to “hold them hostage to [White House adviser] Steven (sic) Miller’s anti-immigrant wish list.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asserted that the offer was “part of the Trump Administration’s unmistakable campaign to make America white again.”
And Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has repeatedly failed to get support for a legislative fix for DACA declared the White House proposal as “dead on arrival,” saying it install a “hard-line immigration agenda—including massive cuts to legal immigration—on the backs of these young people.”
The reaction was not just hyperbolic, but hypocritical. And nothing new for Democrats on the issue of immigration.
Less than a decade ago, Sen. Chuck Schumer told an audience at Georgetown University, “The American people are fundamentally pro-legal immigration and anti-illegal immigration. We will only pass comprehensive reform when we recognize this fundamental concept.”
In 2013, Pelosi parroted the “racism” of secure border supporters when she praised Senate passage of a bill “upholds our basic principles: to secure our borders, protect our workers, unite families, and offer an earned pathway to citizenship.”
The Democrats have abandoned their principles on border security and immigration reform and it has gained them nothing. President Trump should remember the principles upon which he was elected and the promises he made to the American people.
FAIR President Dan Stein rightly criticized the plan – it offers “Americans too little while granting illegal aliens too much.”