Pay no attention to the hundreds of thousands of people entering our country illegally every month, scamming our humanitarian asylum laws and using children as get out of jail free cards. The real priority, the Democratic-controlled House of Representative is telling us, is amnesty for illegal aliens. House Democrats are preparing to roll out immigration legislation and, based upon what the party leaders are saying in advance, you will need a microscope to find any language in their bill that talks about improving immigration enforcement.
Step One in the Democrats’ plan is amnesty. “We need to move forward first on the DACA and the TPS,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told members of his caucus at a recent party retreat.
Step Two in the Democrats’ plan is a bigger amnesty. “And then we need to move very quickly onto comprehensive immigration reform,” Hoyer added. For those who do not have an unabridged “Newspeak” dictionary on their bookshelves, comprehensive immigration reform means comprehensive amnesty.
Step Three? If there is a Step Three, there is no reason to believe that it will have anything do with securing the border, ending asylum abuse, preventing adults from using kids as human shields, requiring the use of E-Verify, or anything else that would send a clear message to people not to violate our immigration laws. About the closest the Democratic House leadership is prepared to come to any of those issues is a statement by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicating her willing to have a chat with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “because we have a symptom at the border.”
A symptom of what, the speaker did not exactly make clear. But voters already have a pretty good sense of what that “symptom at the border” might be. According to a new Gallup poll, “poor leadership” of government and immigration are the two most pressing issues facing the country. And, one is a direct symptom of the other. Our multi-faceted immigration crisis – 21 percent of voters consider it to be the country’s most pressing problem – is a direct outcome of our dysfunctional government that 23 percent of voters consider to be the biggest issue that needs to be addressed.
Effective government leadership would get to work on solving a problem that one out of five voters say is their top priority. Instead, the forthcoming Democratic bill(s) will focus on amnesty, which is the priority of a very narrow, but noisy, segment of their political base. According the Gallup poll, immigration is the top priority for only 5 percent of Democrats – presumably those who eat, sleep, and breath amnesty for illegal aliens.
By contrast, immigration is the top issue for 41 percent of Republican voters (are you paying attention, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell?) and 18 percent of Independents. Presumably just about all of those Republicans and the vast majority of the Independents who rank immigration at the top of their to-do lists, prioritize border enforcement, ending asylum abuse, mandatory E-Verify, and similar measures designed to protect the interests of U.S. citizens.
The Democrats seem to be doubling down on immigration policies that only a small sliver of their base really cares about (perhaps a “symptom” of poor government leadership?). Election Day is only 18 months off. It’s your move, Mr. President and Mr. Majority Leader.