Tag Archives: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

An Interesting Inauguration Gift

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On Saturday, PJ Media reported that a federal appeals court has declared DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) unlawful. We all knew that. I am not sure why it has taken so long for the courts to reach that decision. However, there is another side of the story. I personally know of a young (9 or 10) child who was brought here by her mother in the 1990’s. The child quickly became acclimated to America and never really progressed past third-grade level or so in her native language. That child is in her forties now and would probably be lost in her native country. There are many children like that. She has become a citizen and is a contributing member of society. Sending someone like her who has not become a citizen back to a country they don’t know would be cruel. However, if they decide to stay in America, they should be barred from receiving government benefits. That would encourage many people who are here illegally of every age to consider voluntarily returning to their home countries.

I would suggest that all illegals who were brought here by their parents and are currently under the age of 25 should be returned to their home countries along with their parents. The reason I chose that age is that unless they came here as babies, they probably have the language and cultural skills they need to return to their home country. If they are over 25, they probably are more American than anything else. I don’t think there is a really fair solution to this problem, but this might be a humane one.

The article at PJ media reports:

A federal appeals court on Friday declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy unlawful, casting a cloud of uncertainty over more than half a million unauthorized immigrants brought to the U.S. as children ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

A panel of judges before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found that a Biden administration rule to codify DACA violated U.S. immigration law. The 2012 Obama administration memo that originally created the policy has also been found to be unlawful by federal courts.

Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a catch. According to the article, “the panel of judges kept DACA alive for current recipients and closed to new applicants.”

The ruling is nevertheless long overdue. For over 12 years, DACA has granted hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came here illegally or overstayed their visas as minors the ability to live and work here without fear of deportation.

As I mentioned above, even Obama knew the program was illegal.

“Comprehensive [immigration] reform, that’s how we’re going to solve this problem,” Obama said in 2010. “Anybody who tells you it’s going to be easy or that I can wave a magic wand and make it happen hasn’t been paying attention to how this town works.”

It wasn’t the only time he said so, either. However, when the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed to pass Congress, Obama did, in fact, wave his executive pen and just created the program via executive fiat.

This is one of many very complicated messes that President Trump is going to be expected to clean up. Most of them have been caused by judges and others refusing to obey and defend the U.S. Constitution.

The Damage To Our Economy That Is Still Possible

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President Biden will spend the last five months of his presidency as a lame duck. That is if he is not forced out by the 25th Amendment (which I consider highly unlikely). Because he remains as President, he can still do considerable financial damage to America by promoting certain policies.

On July 15th, The Federalist posted an article about the Biden administration’s latest healthcare proposal. The Biden administration proposal would extend a “temporary” increase in Obamacare subsidies, create new federal spending and undermine the current healthcare system. The higher subsidies were part of the Democrats’ partisan “stimulus” bill in early 2021. These subsidies were then extended for three years in 2022. These subsidies will expire at the same time the Trump tax relief package expires.

The Congressional Budge Office (CBO) reports that this increase in subsides would result in a “3.5 million decrease in enrollment in employment-based coverage.” The budget office explained that “the decline in employment-based coverage would be larger under a permanent [subsidy] extension,” because “more employers would change their offers of health insurance if the policy became permanent.” In other words, if you like your plan, tough luck — your employer could cancel it for you.

The article at The Federalist also notes the although extending the subsides would increase the number of insured Americans by 3.4 million, under the proposal 3.5 million Americans would lose employer-based coverage.

The article further notes that from the Exchanges’ launch in 2014 through 2021, only households with incomes under four times the poverty level ($124,800 for a family of four this year) qualified for subsidies.This year that 750 percent-of-poverty threshold stands at $112,950 for an individual, and $234,000 for a family of four.

The administration has also allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to qualify for subsidies. You don’t even have to be an American to get money from the government! The DACA policy will cost $9 billion in the coming decade plus $1.6 billion in interest costs.

Congress needs to say “NO” to any Biden administration proposals that increase the deficit. Any members of Congress that agree to spending more money during the end of this lame duck presidency need to be voted out of office.

The Impact Of DACA

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On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about one of the consequences of the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program for illegal aliens.

The article reports:

Twelve years ago, in 2012, former President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program via executive order, which has allowed close to a million illegal aliens to avoid deportation from the United States.

Standards for DACA, championed by President Joe Biden, were set so low that tens of thousands of illegal aliens with prior arrest records for crimes including murder, rape, kidnapping, and sex abuse were able to secure deferred deportation status and work permits to stay in the United States.

…As of October 2019, the federal government had granted DACA to nearly 68,000 illegal aliens with prior arrest records, while fewer than 30,000 illegal aliens with prior arrests were denied DACA or had their DACA status terminated as a result.

More than 25,000 illegal aliens were granted DACA despite having been arrested for drunk driving, along with roughly 3,300 previously arrested for assault, nearly 1,500 previously arrested for burglary, almost 600 previously arrested for hit-and-run, 259 previously arrested for sex abuse or child rape, more than 170 previously arrested for kidnapping, 62 previously arrested for rape, more than 30 previously arrested for animal cruelty, 15 previously arrested for murder, five previously arrested for manslaughter, and two previously arrested for having child pornography.

We have enough criminals in America–we don’t need to import them.

The article notes:

“There are legitimate concerns about the lack of rigor in the vetting process for DACA,” Vaughan (Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan) said:

The lenient eligibility criteria and ‘lite and lean’ background checks that were directed under then-USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas meant that many individuals with criminal histories were able to obtain DACA. According to a USCIS report, about 12 percent of DACA applicants had arrest records, includ[ing] assault, battery, rape, murder and driving under the influence, and 85 percent of those applicants were approved.
[Emphasis added]

In one case, DACA illegal alien Luis Perez of Mexico was sentenced in 2023 to five consecutive life sentences for murdering 38-year-old Steven Marler, 23-year-old Josh Hampton, and a woman accused of being an accomplice to Marler and Hampton’s murders.

In 2018, DACA illegal alien Francisco Javier Rios-Covarrubias of Mexico was sentenced to 35 years for brutally terrorizing and sexually abusing a three-year-old girl in Arizona in a case that shocked investigators.

South America and other countries are not sending us their best.

Isn’t Congress Supposed To Be The One Making Laws?

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On April 21, American Greatness posted an article about some new regulations the Biden administration is planning for Title IV.

The article reports:

On April 19, 2024, the Biden administration finalized regulations it proposed in July 2022. Likely to avoid backlash at the polls this November, the administration recently indicated it is postponing finalizing the proposed sports-related Title IX regulations it published in April 2023. In each case, the regulations do something that not only the Executive Branch does not have authority to do but also what Congress has specifically declined to do.

They declare that “sex” in Title IX actually means sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

The Executive Branch has no authority to make such a radical change in the meaning of a statute. But this is no ordinary Executive Branch. This is the one whose chief executive recently boasted that although the Supreme Court ruled that he does not have the authority to forgive student loans, he is doing it anyway,[ii][ii]1 requiring truckers and plumbers to absorb the cost of strangers’ ineffectual college degrees. And although the President is required to administer and enforce the laws Congress has passed, this President has steadfastly refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws.

Our government of, by, and for the people has bit by bit become a government of forced mandates to which we do not consent. Mandatory school, business, and church closures during 2020, along with required COVID-19 shots, were but the most visible recent manifestation of this trend.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, commonly known as the DREAM Act, was first introduced in Congress in 2001 and reintroduced numerous times thereafter. Each time, members of Congress, mindful of the opposition of their constituents, refused to pass it. Nonetheless, in 2012, without even relying on his phone and his pen as he had threatened, but merely with a memorandum from the head of his Department of Homeland Security, President Obama implemented DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans), a similar program for their parents, in effect implementing provisions of the law—the DREAM Act—which Congress repeatedly refused to pass.

Where is Congress? Hasn’t anyone in Congress figured out that this is not the government of our Founding Fathers? The checks and balances our Constitution put there are there for a reason. Congress needs to stand up and take back the power our Founding Fathers gave it.

The Buck Stops Anywhere But Here

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Most Americans are willing to admit that we have a crisis at our southern border. Most Americans are aware that the crisis began when newly-elected President Biden undid all of the Executive Orders President Trump had used to close the border. However, President Biden is still blaming President Trump for the border crisis. Evidently the fact that President Trump has been out of power for three plus years does not play into President Biden’s logic.

On Saturday, Breitbart posted a list of 64 ways that President Biden has opened America’s borders.

I will post part of the list. Please follow the link above to read the entire list and the details.

Here are some of the highlights:

  1. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden terminated the National Emergency at the Southwest border (Proclamation 9844), thereby halting emergency construction of a border wall.
  2. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) further entrenching the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
  3. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden unveiled the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., demonstrating intent to reward illegal border crossers with a path to citizenship.
  4. Jan 20, 2021: President Biden revoked Trump-era Executive Order that was designed to ensure there was meaningful enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
  5. Jan 20, 2021: The Administration issued an Executive action ending limitations and restrictions against immigration from certain countries associated with terrorism.
  6. Jan 20, 2021: The Biden Administration announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement, effectively providing amnesty to criminal and other removable aliens and sending the signal the Biden Administration would not enforce the law. 
  7. Feb 1, 2021: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented Acting Secretary Pekoske’s policy requiring a new “process [that] shall provide for assessments of alternatives to removal including, but not limited to, staying or reopening cases, alternative forms of detention, custodial detention, whether to grant temporary deferred action, or other appropriate action.”
  8. Feb 2, 2021: President Biden issued Executive Order (EO) 14010 and began processing asylum claims at the border.
  9. Feb 6, 2021: Secretary of State Antony Blinken suspended, and began termination procedures, for the Trump Administration’s Asylum Cooperative Agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.
  10. Feb 2021: The Biden Administration voluntarily stopped applying Title 42 expulsions to children across the board, setting off a major wave of unaccompanied alien children, family units, and illegal aliens generally heading to the U.S. border.

That’s only the first ten. President Biden willingly ended the programs that were securing our southern border. He is responsible for the disaster that border has become. He is also responsible for any negative results of the large number of military-age men that are coming across that border.

When Did We Give Judges This Kind Of Power?

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Yesterday Just the News reported that a federal judge has reinstated DACA. DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that would provide people brought into America illegally as children a path to citizenship. DACA was put in place by an executive order by President Obama. When President Trump tried to undo that executive order, which supposedly he is allowed to do, the courts got involved. It went to the Supreme Court, and they told President Trump he was doing it wrong. So we are essentially back at square one.

The article reports:

The DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) saga continues its long and winding road through all branches of government, as a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Friday that these undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children can once again apply to remain in this country legally.

This goes back to the Obama administration, who said repeatedly that “I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen,” and words to that effect.  

But finally he gave up on Congress and in June of 2012, he signed DACA into law as an executive directive and said that it was “a temporary stopgap measure.”

President Trump had planned to end it, and then offered it as part of a grand bargain to get a wall built and to end chain migration. The Democrats did not accept his offer. Finally he attempted to rescind the Obama directive and end the program, but the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against him in June of this year on the basis that he hadn’t properly used the Administrative Procedure Act, not on the merits or the constitutionality of the case.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis fully restored the Obama-era program. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to begin accepting new applications on Monday.

The Trump administration can now go back to court. I do have compassion for the children who were brought here with no say in the matter. However, DACA as it is currently set up is an invitation to fraud. We have MS-13 gang members lying about their age to get into the country. We have no real handle on how many people this will impact. What do you say when you see a person who has waiting years to immigrate to America, doing it the right way and paying the cost and they watch someone who came illegally step in front of them in line? This whole program needs to go back to the drawing board along with our existing immigration policies.

The Supreme Court Lost Their Copy Of The Constitution

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Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. It’s interesting that they chose to uphold the program when President Obama, the author of the program, admitted various times that the program was illegal.

Yesterday PJ Media posted a list of the ten times President Obama declared that his creation of DACA was illegal. Please follow the link to the article for the details, but here is the basic list:

  1. During remarks at a 2010 Cinco de Mayo Celebration
  2. During remarks on comprehensive immigration reform at American University
  3. During an MTV/BET town hall meeting and a question-and-answer session
  4. During a radio interview with Univision
  5. During a Univision town hall
  6. During remarks at a Facebook town hall meeting and a question-and-answer session
  7. During the 2011 Miami Dade College commencement
  8. During remarks on comprehensive immigration reform at Chamizal National Memorial
  9. During remarks to the National Council of La Raza
  10. During a roundtable with questions from Yahoo!, MSN Latino, AOL Latino, and HuffPost Latino Voices

So a President who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution passed a law (a violation of the separation of powers) and now the Supreme Court is not willing to undo that law. That is another reason Americans think Washington has lost its way.

The Western Journal posted a screenshot of a tweet by The Daily Caller summarizing what Justice Thomas said in the dissent:

As usual, Justice Thomas got it right.

 

 

Today At The Supreme Court

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Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments about DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). It is interesting that the case has taken so long to get to the Supreme Court.

In September 2017, the Heritage Foundation reminded us of the following statement by former President Obama:

Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.” In March 2011, he said that with “respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.” In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn’t “just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.”

I guess he changed his mind. Also, just for the record, former President Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional Law Professor. We are not a democracy–we are a representative republic. Did he know that?

At any rate, DACA is now at the Supreme Court. Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the coming hearings.

The article notes:

The long-running battle over the Trump administration’s bid to end the Obama-era program for young undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” will land before the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
***
“The administration has basically chalked up the fact that they are going to lose a lot of these cases in the lower courts,” said Thomas Dupree, a former top Bush Justice Department official and now an appellate attorney.

“But they’re playing the long game. I think that there are those in the White House and the Justice Department who have made a calculation saying, ‘Look we can absorb all these losses in the lower courts because we are going to win the endgame when this case gets into the Supreme Court.’”

It remains to be seen how the court will rule, however, on this complicated issue — which concerns the limits of one president trying to rescind the policies of his predecessor.

The article concludes:

I haven’t studied the briefs so as to be up to speed on the technical arguments that will be presented to the Court tomorrow. But at the end of the day, it is hard to see how the courts can hold that the president is legally barred from carrying out his constitutional duty to see that the laws–including the immigration laws–are faithfully executed.

Stay tuned.

An Illustration Of Chutzpah

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Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that two illegal aliens are suing the Trump administration to make sure they can continue to receive taxpayer money in the form of welfare and still be able to obtain green cards to permanently stay in the country. The two illegal aliens were granted the right to stay in the United States by Barack Obama through the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. I’m glad they are so grateful for being allowed to stay that they are suing the country so they can receive money they have not earned. How do illegal aliens have legal standing in America?

The article reports:

The open borders group CASA de Maryland and two DACA illegal aliens are suing the Trump administration over its soon-to-be enforcement of the ‘public charge’ rule, which would save American taxpayers billions by effectively ending welfare-dependent legal immigration to the U.S.,” Breitbart reports. “The regulation prevents legal immigrants from permanently resettling in the U.S. by obtaining green cards so long as they are found to have used or likely to use welfare programs like food stamps and subsidized health care.”

The illegal aliens were granted a shield from deportation by Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Trump has banned welfare-dependent legal immigrants from resettling in the United States. American taxpayers now spend nearly $60 billion a year to pay for the welfare, crime, and schooling costs for some 1.5 million low-skilled legal immigrants every year.

“The new rule would allow immigration officials to deny [Lawful Permanent Resident] status to many immigrants in an arbitrary and discriminatory way,” Amy Marshak, senior counsel at ICAP, said in a statement. “This is by design. President Trump and his advisors have expressed animus toward non-white immigrants, and studies already have shown that the new rule will disproportionately affect immigrants of color.”

Why would the new rule ‘disproportionately affect immigrants of color’? Are you saying that immigrants of color are less able to support themselves than other immigrants? Isn’t that racist?

Consider what it happening here. You want to break into the country (that’s what entering illegally is), take money from people who earned it, and then sue the country because they don’t want to take on the burden of granting citizenship to people who can’t support themselves. Wow.

To quote the movie “Men in Black,” “We’re not hosting an intergalactic kegger down here.”

I Need Someone To Explain The Logic Of This To Me

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On Sunday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a recent statement by California Representative Nanette Barragan. Representative Barragan was elected in 2016.

The article reports:

“You have the wall built on U.S. territory,” Barragan said. “People can get up to the wall and they can still go to a port of entry and ask for asylum and you’re still on U.S. territory. What this wall essentially is going to do is help the president with his anti-asylum ban.”

Barragan explained that she knew this from visiting the border recently.

“They’re turning people away, even if they’re on U.S. soil,” she said. “What is it doing? It’s incentivizing them to break the law and come in within the ports.”

Barragan made these comments just a day after Democrats unilaterally rejected Trump’s offer to provide protection for refugee immigrants in exchange for a border wall. Trump offered to extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), an Obama-era initiative that allowed children of Illegal immigrants to remain in the United States. Trump also said he would open up Temporary Protective Status, which allows refugees from foreign nations to seek asylum. In his plan, Trump would extend both programs by three years.

Let’s get something straight–no matter what method you use to come to America illegally, you are breaking the law. People don’t accidentally come here illegally–they make plans to do so. That is their choice–no one is incentivizing them–in fact, a wall might actually discourage them. When I lock my doors at night, am I incentivizing people to break a window to enter my house? I don’t think so.

The Attempt To Change The Demographics Of America Continues

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On its Corruption Chronicles page, Judicial Watch posted the following yesterday:

An open borders group that has benefitted from U.S. taxpayer dollars and is funded by leftwing billionaire George Soros launched a smartphone application to help illegal immigrants avoid federal authorities. The app, Notifica (Notify), is described in a Laredo, Texas news article as a tool to protect immigrants living in the U.S. illegally by utilizing high tech and online social communications. With the click of a button, illegal aliens can alert family, friends and attorneys of encounters with federal authorities. “Immigration agents knocking at the door?” the news story asks. “Now, there’s an app for that, too.”

The group behind the app is called United We Dream, which describes itself as the country’s largest immigrant youth-led community. The nonprofit has more than 400,000 members nationwide and claims to “embrace the common struggle of all people of color and stand up against racism, colonialism, colorism, and xenophobia.” Among its key projects is winning protections and rights for illegal immigrants, defending against deportation, obtaining education for illegal immigrants and acquiring “justice and liberation” for undocumented LGBT “immigrants and allies.” Illegal aliens encounter lots of discrimination, which creates a lot of fear, according to United We Dream. “We empower people to develop their leadership, their organizing skills, and to develop our own campaigns to fight for justice and dignity for immigrants and all people,” United We Dream states on its website, adding that this is achieved through immigrant youth-led campaigns at the local, state, and federal level.

United We Dream started as a project of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), according to records obtained by Judicial Watch. Between 2008 and 2010, NILC received $206,453 in U.S. government grants, the records show. The project funded was for “immigration-related employment discrimination public education.” Headquartered in Los Angeles, NILC was established in 1979 and is dedicated to “defending and advancing the rights of immigrants with low income.” The organization, which also has offices in Washington D.C. and Berkeley, California claims to have played a leadership role in spearheading Barack Obama’s amnesty program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which has shielded hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from deportation. “Ultimately, NILC’s goals are centered on promoting the full integration of all immigrants into U.S. society,” according to its website.

Both the NILC and its offshoot, United We Dream, get big bucks from Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF). In fact, both nonprofits list OSF as a key financial backer. In the United States Soros groups have pushed a radical agenda that includes promoting an open border with Mexico and fighting immigration enforcement efforts, fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist black separationist organizations, financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups involved in the Ferguson Missouri riots, weakening the integrity of the nation’s electoral systems, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and eroding 2nd Amendment protections. OSF has also funded a liberal think-tank headed by former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and the scandal-ridden activist group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), so corrupt that Congress banned it from receiving federal funding.

Incredibly, the U.S. government uses taxpayer dollars to support Soros’ radical globalist agenda abroad. As part of an ongoing investigation, Judicial Watch has exposed several collaborative efforts between Uncle Sam and Soros in other countries. Just last week Judicial Watch published a special investigative report that exposes in detail the connection between U.S.-funded entities and Soros’ OSF to further the Hungarian philanthropist’s efforts in Guatemala. The goal is to advance a radical globalist agenda through “lawfare” and political subversion, the report shows. Much like in the United States, OSF programs in Guatemala include funding liberal media outlets, supporting global politicians, advocating for open borders, fomenting public discord and influencing academic institutions.

Last year Judicial Watch exposed a joint effort between the U.S. government and Soros to destabilize the democratically elected, center-right government in Macedonia. Records obtained by Judicial Watch in that investigation show that the U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia worked behind the scenes with OSF to funnel large sums of American dollars for the cause, constituting an interference of the U.S. Ambassador in domestic political affairs in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The cash—about $5 million—flowed through the State Department and USAID.

Make no mistake–this is an attempt to change the demographics and culture of America. This is an attempt to end the concept of American exceptionalism and the things that make America unique. One of the things to remember as the immigration caravan sits on the Mexican-American border is that many of the members of that caravan are MS-13 gang members lying about their age. Some members of that caravan have connections to terrorism which they will deny when questioned. There are in that caravan people simply seeking freedom and safety, but we have no way of knowing who is who. I am sure some of the people in the caravan would make a positive contribution to America, but we have no way of knowing which people they are. We need to change our legal immigration system to streamline the immigration process, but we also need to gain control of our borders. We are a sovereign nation. As a sovereign nation we have an obligation to provide safety for our citizens and to make decisions that will contribute to the economic well being of our citizens. Safety and economics are things that should enter into the debate on immigration. We need to show compassion, but we also need to encourage people to come to America who are willing to contribute their skills and talent to America.

I Would Rather See The Government Shut Down Than See The Current Budget Bill Pass

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I would like to remind Republicans that they were sent to Washington to shrink the size of government and reduce spending. If they choose not to do that, I will gladly vote to replace them with people who will. On Wednesday night, a $1.3 trillion budget plan was introduced. The proposal does not include many of the things the Republicans that were sent to Congress promised–there is funding for Planned Parenthood, funding for Sanctuary cities, and there is very limited funding for a border wall. The bill also does not include any remedy for the DACA children, which is something the Democrats said they wanted (I don’t think they wanted a solution–I think they wanted the issue). It is a bad bill. Not only is it a bad bill–it was introduced in a manner that does not allow anyone to analyze it properly.

In an article posted yesterday Breitbart points out:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) struck a deal in February to increase domestic and military spending by nearly $300 billion over the next two years. The bill includes an additional $90 billion in disaster aid for states and localities affected by last year’s hurricanes and $140 billion for emergency military funds.

Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs for FreedomWorks, said, “Republicans don’t know how to stop spending money.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that our national debt has skyrocketed in recent years to untenable levels.

“This year, we’re looking at a deficit of $750 to $1 trillion. Next year, the estimate is $1 trillion or more. I have to wonder if there is any way that we can avoid a national insolvency or bankruptcy.”

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) lamented in an interview with Breitbart News Daily on Tuesday that the “Senate Democrats seem to be calling most of the shots.”

A report on Monday suggested that the omnibus spending bill will not include a bailout of Obamacare.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), another member of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that a number of liberal policies will be included in the omnibus, without any substantial border wall funding.

Jordan said, “Planned Parenthood, Gateway Bridge, Planned Parenthood, trillion dollar deficit, and no wall.”

This is a bad bill, and Congress should be forced to go back to the drawing board and cut spending. I don’t care if the government shuts down–they need to get it right.

The Cost Of The Wall

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One of the recent talking points used against those people who actually want to control our borders is the cost of building a wall. Obviously, Mexico will not directly pay for a wall–they enjoy having people come here illegally and send money back to Mexico. There is no incentive for them to put a stop to that behavior. So how do we pay for the wall?

Paul Sperry posted an article at The New York Post on Saturday that offers one possible solution.

The article reports:

Mexico won’t have to pay for the wall, after all. US taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab, either. The controversial barrier, rather, will cover its own cost just by closing the border to illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole.

That’s the finding of recent immigration studies showing the $18 billion wall President Trump plans to build along the southern border will pay for itself by curbing the importation of not only crime and drugs, but poverty.

“The wall could pay for itself even if it only modestly reduced illegal crossings and drug smuggling,” Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Post.

Federal data shows that a wall would work. A two-story corrugated metal fence in El Paso, Texas, first erected under the Bush administration has already curtailed illegal border crossings there by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which it was built.

The problem is not only illegal immigrants–it’s drug smuggling. How much money and how many lives do the illegal drugs coming into America cost?

The article concludes:

While Democrats complain the $18 billion price tag for the Trump wall is too high, the “Dreamers” amnesty bill they want Trump and Republicans to pass in exchange for funding the wall (or ideally in spite of the wall) would cost US taxpayers even more than the construction of the border partition over 10 years.

“The cost of the DREAM Act has been estimated as very large — a $26 billion net cost in the first 10 years,” Camarota noted.

Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that 3 million DREAM Act recipients would receive an estimated $12 billion-plus in ObamaCare subsidies, more than $5.5 billion in Medicaid benefits, $5.5 billion in earned-income and child-tax credits and more than $2 billion in food stamps.

A bipartisan bill incorporating the deal was defeated in the Senate last month by a vote of 54-45. Trump rejected the proposal in favor of a tougher border bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), which limits the number of DACA beneficiaries to 1.8 million, curbs family visas, or so-called chain migration, and phases out the diversity visa lottery, while earmarking $25 billion in funding for the wall and other border security.

The problem is not the money–the problem is the spending priorities.

What Exactly Are The Democrats Opposing In The Immigration Bill?

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Rasmussen Reports posted an article yesterday about the polling they have done regarding a border wall. The poll questions were related to building a border wall and dealing with the ‘dreamers.’

The article reports:

Most voters favor the immigration reform plan detailed by President Trump in his State of the Union speech and think it’s likely to finally produce a secure southern border.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters favor a proposal that would create a pathway to citizenship for those brought to this country illegally when they were children, build a wall on the Mexican border and change legal immigration to a more merit-based system. Thirty-two percent (32%) oppose a plan with those key elements in it, while 16% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Have the Democrats opposing the proposed immigration bill read these poll numbers? Is there a reason they are going against the will of the majority of voters? Have we reached the point where the Democrats will simply oppose anything President Trump proposes regardless of what the voters want? Somehow I don’t think that is the path to victory in the mid-term elections. The Democrats (with the help of the mainstream media) may be able to convince some voters that the Republicans blocked a pathway to citizenship for the ‘dreamers,’ but there may be enough informed voters that know the truth that will not support their candidates. Stay tuned. If the Democrats can figure out how to turn it to their advantage, we may be in for another government shutdown.

Immigration As Seen By A Thirty-Something

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Below is a guest post by Michael Daskalos, a young friend who follows history and politics very closely. The links with the paragraphs are the sources for his statements.

Trump wants a deal; and indications are that if you voted for him, you consider what he wants is pretty moderate by any reasonable standards. If you voted for him and are incredibly disappointed, it’s probably because you think this is way less effective than a reasonable and well thought out plan that involves more deportations, lots of rope and assorted other things best left unsaid…and that’s just for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its immigration activist allies. Let them run for office in Mexico, or the Knesset where they can have all the open borders immigration they want.
http://www.unz.com/isteve/drumpf-regime-attempts-to-deport-saintly-immigration-activist-white-collar-felon/

The sticking point is the Democrats vested interest—getting every single possible future vote out of this that they can get as fast as possible. Trump’s vested interests—getting re-elected and Making America Great Again are counter to this plan. As such President Trump wants whatever deal is made to have teeth and enforcement up front and concrete—just like people have been promised for years now. It is telling that when anyone asks for the law as written to be applied, they are called a fascistic racist white supremacist. If President Trump does not get guaranteed ironclad language, he knows he would have on his hands what most will instantly understand as “Getting Reaganed” wherein every state mentioned below gets the California treatment in short order.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/01/shock-report-3-6-million-dreamers-us-enough-flip-florida-arizona-georgia-north-carolina/

The corporate-paid-for class of professional Republicans are fine with this. Many of them are getting forced out or retiring from seats that are becoming “electorally unwinnable” (political euphemism for “your voters were demographically displaced”) or being voluntold by their donor handlers to take the money and run because they don’t fit in this new divide. This anti-Trump gambit supported by all the anti-Trump voices we are familiar with is attempting to give the Democrats the House and increase pressure for amnesty that way and feign the appearance that Americans support it. The anti-Trump forces are also aware that one of the first actions of a Democratic House of Representatives would be to initiate the impeachment process.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42821505
What flashy titles for pieces like the one linked above are doing is taking a simple thing that’s well known: Trump is ok with a few DACA recipients, a micro fraction of the eligible “Dreamers” that might be useful and possibly a few hangers on that also attended diploma mills, a path to citizenship as a bargaining chip, and framing it for a particular audience. They leave out or bury the fact that the concessions on DACA are being made in exchange for teeth everywhere else in the deal. The reason President Trump is demanding specific language is so that it won’t or can’t be expanded by the courts later, as anyone with a couple brain cells knows will happen if they have seen the last year unfold.

Those articles are an attempt to separate hardliners and reasonable people like myself from supporting the president because he might not force as tough a line as could be imagined. The governing dynamic that has to be understood is that Democrats want every single illegal immigrant in the country currently to be eligible to vote in 2018.  That’s the starting position they are working from when they approach the table for any “compromise.” The wording is to be designed to wiggle as high a number of them into that possible, and as soon as possible, regardless of language that might infer otherwise. This fight is about language that will allow Democrats and their Republican allies, you know the names, the legal space to pull shenanigans through the courts with hand picked judges to make that happen.

The Deal Or The Issue?

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There is a school of thought that the Democrats don’t want a deal on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)–they want the issue in the 2018 mid-term elections. We may be about to find out if that is true.

Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an opinion piece about the immigration deal offered by President Trump. The deal currently on the table is to allow 1.8 illegal immigrants who came as children to apply for U.S. citizenship (this includes 690,000 who applied for DACA status as well as others who are eligible but did not apply). In exchange, President Trump gets $25 billion to build a wall, changes the slots in the diversity visa lottery to slots based on ‘merit’, and limits chain migration to nuclear family members.

The whole situation brings to mind a line from the movie “Men in Black,”

“We’re not hosting an intergallactic kegger down here.”

 [Zed (Rip Torn) in Men In Black (1997)

The deal currently on the table is pretty much what Senator Schumer asked for.

The opinion piece explains:

There just isn’t any substantial difference and, what’s more, there aren’t any significant losses. Schumer won’t be prostrating himself on the altar to offer his career as a sacrifice if he accepts the deal. Democrats have promised a fix for immigrant kids since literally the turn of the millennium. There’s no abandonment of principle here: Democrats have supported border security since 2006, when a majority got on board with a border fence.

Democrats can take this deal and, with a bit of courage, face their base. Of course, ending chain migration isn’t insignificant. But not every Democrat bet their political fate on full-fledged amnesty. Survival is possible.

Do the Democrats want to deal or do they want to whine?

Some Basic Facts About The Government Shutdown

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I just want to remind people that the Republicans do not have the power to shut down the government–even if they wanted to. It takes sixty Senate votes to pass the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government. (This could be avoided if we had a budget). The Republicans do not have sixty members in the Senate, so the only way that a CR can pass is if a few Democrats vote for it. Since enough Democrats did not vote for the CR to reach sixty votes, the CR did not pass. The Democrats have stated that DACA is the reason for their lack of support for the CR, but DACA does not expire until March, so that is questionable at best. Most of what you see on the news today will be political posturing. Hopefully, saner heads will prevail at some point, and the government will reopen.

Hoisted On Their Own Petard

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President Obama’s Executive Order creating DACA  (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was unconstitutional. No one challenged it because no one challenged anything President Obama did that was unconstitutional. So President Trump decided to make the Democrats in Congress put up or shut up. He rescinded DACA and gave Congress until March 2018 to come up with an alternative approach. Just for the record, Congress is the branch of government that is supposed to make the law–they are not supposed to be made by Executive Order–all President Trump did was bring us back into alignment with the U.S. Constitution.

The American Thinker posted an article today explaining the dilemma that President Trump created for Senator Schumer by rescinding DACA and giving Congress a deadline. Needless to say, Congress is not good at deadlines.

The article reports:

The “young immigrants” in question re the so-called “Dreamers,” that group of illegal immigrants purportedly brought to this country by their parents, one quarter of whom are functionally illiterate and half of whom have not bothered to learn English.  The Democrats correctly see them as future voters, and hope that chain migration triples or quadruples the 800,000 into millions of new Democrats if they are allowed to gain permanent residence and citizenship.

The problem is that the general public is far from convinced that legalizing a group of border violators likely to become tax consumers, not tax payers, is the most pressing problem facing the nation, worthy of shutting down the government if Democrats don’t get their way. President Trump already called their bluff when they threatened the continuing resolution over DACA last month and the Dems caved and averted a Christmas season government shutdown. Their problem is that a substantial part of their base is angry over that concession to public opinion

The article concludes:

The Senate Democrats have been able to enforce a remarkable degree of party solidarity, far more discipline than the GOP. That is a huge bargaining asset for Schumer, already empowered by his party’s pickup in Alabama. But DACA looks like it could be a wedge issue destroying that disciplinary power.

This is a no-win situation. Harvard graduate Schumer should be asking himself how he got himself into this situation. But of course, he won’t. Either he alienates his base, or he risks adding to the GOP Senate majority by shutting down the government and having Trump fighting back in ways that never would have occurred to Presidents Bush or any establishment Republicans.

There is also another part of this issue–not all of the dreamers have been model citizens–they have included a number of MS 13 gang members. As Americans see the personal safety risks involved in blanket amnesty for the dreamers, they may demand that each dreamer be looked at as an individual case. We also need to remember that a large percentage of the dreamers are in their thirties by now. This should make it fairly easy to determine who is an asset to our country and who is a liability. Individual meret should be the basis of creating a path toward citizenship.

Let’s Look At Some Facts

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While everyone in Washington is screaming that DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) should be repealed, let’s look at some of the facts about President Obama‘s Executive Order that began the program.

From YouTube:

When DACA was originally enacted, Paul Ryan and other Republicans agreed that it was an illegal executive overreach. They criticized it frequently. Now they are criticizing President Trump for ending it.

Red State has a very logical explanation for this change of heart:

The reason for the inaction is pretty banal. If Ryan convinces Trump to leave DACA intact, he gets his caucus through 2018 without having to cast a vote to either grant “amnesty” so some 800,000 illegals or to okay the deportation of some 800,000 people who are pretty much American in outlook. If Trump pulls the plug on DACA, then Ryan has to decide which hurts his caucus more: acting or not acting. Neither of those options is going to sell all that well.

What Ryan said is utter gibberish. Congress has uncontested power to regulate immigration and naturalization. The President is charged with faithfully executing the laws. DACA is a violation of that charge. Congress is part of the solution; in fact, Congress is the whole solution. Unfortunately, Paul Ryan wants Congress to continue being part of the problem and he wants cover from Trump to do it.

Congress has lost the ability to do anything but worry about its own re-election. We should take that worry away from them by voting them out of office.

Meanwhile, Breitbart posted an article yesterday about some of the people DACA has allowed to remain in America.

The article includes the following:

Below, Breitbart News has compiled a list of 50 of the 2,139 DACA recipients, deemed “DREAMers” by the open borders lobby, who have had their temporary protected status revoked due to crimes including: “A felony criminal conviction; a significant misdemeanor conviction; multiple misdemeanor convictions; gang affiliation; or arrest of any crime in which there is deemed to be a public safety concern,” according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency.

The majority of crimes by DACA recipients include: “Alien smuggling, assaultive offenses, domestic violence, drug offenses, DUI, larceny and thefts, criminal trespass and burglary, sexual offenses with minors, other sex offenses and weapons offenses,” USCIS has stated.

Do we really want these people in our country?

The adults who were brought here as children are a unique problem, but DACA is not the correct answer. Congress should actually do something constructive. The best way to handle this would be to begin to document who the ‘dreamers’ are and begin a path to citizenship for those who are actually contributing to the welfare of America. It would also be necessary to end ‘chain migration’ for the dreamers. I would allow those people brought here as children to stay, but I would prohibit them from receiving government benefits and from bringing their relatives here. Any dreamer convicted of a crime should be sent back to their home country, regardless of whether or not they have a relationship with that country. If you won’t respect our laws, you can’t stay here.

The dreamers are already here.–you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube, but America should not have to support them. They need to find a way to support themselves.

These Were Not The Study Results They Had Hoped For

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Breitbart posted an article today about a study done by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s open borders organization. The study was initiated to show the hardships that would be caused by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.This is the program that affects people who were brought to America illegally as children and have no relationship or association with the countries they came from. In many cases they don’t even speak the language of the country they were born in. Obviously these people do need some sort of special consideration, but whatever consideration they are given has to be done in a way that limits fraud and does not interfere with those seeking to come to America legally.

Meanwhile, back at the study.

The article reports:

According to the FWD.us study, if DACA is repealed it would mean potentially 700,000 American jobs could open up for American citizens.

The study claims that on average, if Trump were to repeal DACA, 30,000 American job opportunities would open up each month. FWD.us President Todd Schulte touted the results of the study as a loss for America’s business community, saying it would have “severe consequences” on the economy.

“Eliminating DACA would have immediate and severe consequences for not only the 800,000 Dreamers enrolled in the program, but for the millions of Americans who live, work, and study with these young people every single day,” Schulte said in a statement.

Immigration hawks have long argued the booming illegal alien population–estimated between 12 to 30 million–and high levels of legal immigration, where the U.S. admits more than one million a year, contribute to the displacement of American workers and wage stagnation.

The situation with DACA is a mess. We need to find a way to help these people become citizens without penalizing American workers and people who come here legally. However, legal Americans need to be given priority in finding employment.

Someone Needs To Stop This Runaway Train

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The Daily Caller is reporting today that the legalization of illegal aliens that the Obama Administration had stated would begin in February 2015 actually began in November 2014.

The article reports:

But on March 3, Obama’s lawyers admitted to the judge that officials had already given three-year DACA amnesties to 100,000 younger people, according to a March 4 article in the Washington Examiner.

 “Out of an abundance of caution, however, Defendants wish to bring one issue to the Court’s attention,” said the administration’s document given to the judge. “Between November 24, 2014 and the issuance of the Court’s [Feb. 16] Order, USCIS granted three-year periods of deferred action to approximately 100,000 individuals who had requested deferred action under the original 2012 DACA guidelines.”

The officials excused the deception by claiming that the announced Feb. 18 start-date “may have led to confusion about when USCIS had begun providing three-year terms of deferred action to individuals already eligible for deferred action under 2012 DACA.”

The lack of respect the Obama Administration seems to have for the Constitution and for the American people is simply amazing. Hopefully the judge in Texas will put a stop to this since Congress does not seem to be able to.

 

 

The Obama Administration Has Forgotten Its Responsibility To Enforce The Law

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about a lawsuit in Arizona. The lawsuit

The article reports:

A career attorney with top ratings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that she faced retaliation from superiors for refusing to drop cases pending against illegal aliens guilty of DUI, identity theft and other crimes.

Patricia Vroom, 59, made the claims in a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court of Appeals in Arizona against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Many of the cases involved were identify theft and other low-level crimes. Ms. Vroom was “instructed to look favorably for prosecutorial discretion on immigration removal cases involving the lowest level of felony convictions for identity theft under Arizona law.”

Think about this for a minute. These are felony convictions. The idea here is to allow convicted felons to stay in America illegally. Don’t we have enough convicted felons that are here legally?

The article further reports:

Vroom also claims that on Nov. 5, 2013, Downer emailed her concerning the case of an individual who was found ineligible for relief under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was started by President Obama, because of an ID theft conviction.

Unknown to Vroom at the time, top ICE and DHS officials had discussed that individual case on a conference call in August 2013.

An angry Downer emailed Vroom on Nov. 5, 2013, demanding to know why she had been unable to convince her field office director to cancel the “notice to appear” order for the alien.

Our immigration laws are currently not being enforced. They do need to be revised and brought up to date, but we do not need amnesty–we need common sense. I strongly suggest that rather than having an overactive President and a lame-duck Congress rewrite our immigration laws, we let the new Congress write them–after discussion and deliberation. Hopefully our new Congress will have some respect for the concept of making sure laws are enforced and will have some respect for the wishes of the American people.