When it was first announced that President Donald Trump was going to reverse President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program I have to admit, before I knew the details I felt a little bad for those impacted. Then I learned the details and realized very few, if any of them, would ever be deported. After that, I saw footage of illegal immigrant activists, with their smug sense of entitlement and demanding chants, and became irritated. If they’d all been deported at that moment and you offered me a lot of money to do so, I would not have been capable of caring less.
Therein lies the problem with legislating, or doing almost anything, based on emotion and not logic. Yet that is exactly what any discussion or debate over immigration policy quickly devolves into.
I understand the desire to not punish those who, through no fault of their own, as the saying goes, ended up in this country. But the anger of those 800,000 enrollees is misdirected when they direct it at the government. It should be directed toward their parents, the ones who knowingly broke our law and put their children in this situation.
On one hand, sins of the parents should not be visited on their children, but on the other they are benefitting directly from illegal actions. We would not allow the children of bank robbers to keep a house bought with stolen money their parents gave them even if they were caught years later. So why should the illegal alien children be given special consideration, up to and including citizenship, because their parents broke the law, in part, for that very end?
As the DACA debate returns to Congress, where it should’ve been all along, we are presented with an opportunity to make significant changes to immigration law. But what should those changes be?
Democrats, if they’re true to their word (which is an enormous “if”), want to do whatever it takes to “protect” the “DREAMers” from the law and possible deportation. This presents Trump and Congressional Republicans an opportunity to make some serious changes to the nation’s immigration laws that, honestly, shouldn’t need a sense of urgency to address but do because what politicians say and what they really believe don’t always reside in the same time zone.
In exchange for a permanent status for these illegal alien children, here are a couple of suggestions.
First, it cannot be a pathway to citizenship. Ever.
Sorry, kids, take it up with mom and dad because they screwed you over. They can stay, they can work, they can do whatever they want except gain full citizenship and vote. If Democrats truly care and aren’t just playing identity politics for votes, it won’t matter. After all, what’s more important: protecting DREAMers or electing Democrats?
Second, end chain migration. In addition to his lechery and manslaughter, Ted Kennedy gave the country nearly unlimited migration. Called “chain migration,” it essentially allows people with legal status in the country to bring family members in too. Couched as a matter of “compassion,” as most awful things liberals do is, it allows someone who left their family behind to pursue a better life for themselves to bring that family over once they’re established here.
Liberals regularly cry about not wanting to “break up families,” but the people who move to the United States are the one choosing to break up their families. If they want to be a part of this country, they should be a part of this country. If they want to be with their family they shouldn’t have left them and are free to return. But just because someone moves here should not give them the right to bring mom and dad or brothers and sisters over and put them on a pathway to citizenship. Depending on their age, they will never contribute as much as the cost of the entitlement benefits they gain once here legally, so they shouldn’t be able to come.
Third, end birthright citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to ensure the citizenship of former slaves, not confer citizenship to anyone who emerges from the womb in the U.S. Were it not for court bastardization this wouldn’t be an issue. We must end the practice of birth tourism and illegal aliens coming to the U.S. to have their kids so the family can engage chain migration to circumvent immigration law. It can and should be corrected.
These are not controversial suggestions, and in exchange for creating a legal DACA program for 800,000 illegal aliens any of all of these needs to be a part of a final package. Get those and the wall becomes significantly less important.
When he used his magic pen to create DACA, President Obama said, “Let’s be clear: This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure.” So the pearl-clutching happening by activists and both Democrats and Republicans should not have come as a surprise. They simply didn’t want to have to deal with it, even those who complained about the obvious unconstitutionality of Obama’s action.
As they scramble to do legally what they’d refused to do since 2012 (while funding it every year), President Trump and people interested in the sovereignty of the United States need to safeguard against Democratic Party demands and Republican Party capitulation.
There now exists a golden opportunity to do something very important on immigration, which also means there now exists an opportunity for something really awful to happen on immigration. President Trump has to play this one smart or we’ll all get played.
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