After the Democrats’ disastrous attempt to hold the country hostage to an illegal alien amnesty in January, the White House was essentially sitting at the table with a full house to Chuck Schumer’s pair of deuces. Polls showed that the American public broadly supported the president’s original list of requirement for an immigration reform bill, and they were not particularly happy with the Democrats shutting down the government in an effort to extort benefits for illegal aliens.
Inexplicably the White House decided to fold a winning hand, and preemptively pared down its list of demands on immigration to just a down payment on a border wall, an end to family chain migration, and an end to the visa lottery while sweetening its offer on amnesty. As Congress sits down to craft a bill, the White House has again tipped its hand by sending a clear signal to the mass immigration lobby that the crown jewel of what is left of the administration’s plans to reform immigration is little more than a façade.
The news media are widely reporting that the Trump administration is assuring Schumer (still sitting with his deuces), and his allies, that they will have 13 years to reinstitute family chain migration before the current family chain migration system winds down. Clearing out the current family chain backlogs and reallocating lottery visas to relatives already in the queue “would effectively make up for the cuts in other immigration categories for about 13 years, [a Trump administration]official said. After that, if Congress takes no additional action to add or expand visa categories, the total number of people allowed to resettle in the U.S. each year likely would decline by hundreds of thousands,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
If Congress takes no additional action to add or expand visa categories is a mighty big if. It’s more like a certainty. The lobbying to restore immigration for this category of relatives, or that category of relatives, will begin the moment a bill is signed. Heck, it’s probably begun already with winks, nods, and private assurances that they’ll sneak these categories back in once the dust has settled and they think no one is paying attention. Thirteen years is a long time, and the way the Republicans are governing they may not even have control of Congress in 13 months.
Here’s another “if.” If the American public has learned anything over the past 30 years, it is that any promises on immigration enforcement, or immigration reform in the public interest, that are not fulfilled before benefits are granted to illegal aliens are never going to happen. We don’t need to wait 13 years to figure that out.