In a report first exclusively provided to the Daily Beast Monday morning, one of the country's top progressive think tanks has issued a new study warning the Democratic Party that President Donald. J. Trump and the GOP are winning the communication battle on illegal immigration and border security. The primary reason is that, as it may surprise leftists, most Americans still care about the rule of law.
The findings, issued by the Center for American Progress, argue that the Democratic Party has wrongly viewed the immigration battle as a "false dichotomy of America as either a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws." Many in the party have attacked President Trump's "law and order" messaging by counteracting that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Thus, as the president increases his call for stricter enforcement, progressives demand that more illegal immigrants are allowed into the country.
But the study titled, "Restoring the Rule of Law Through a Fair, Humane, and Workable Immigration System," argues that this sort of rhetoric from lefty politicians only drives voters towards the president's line of thinking.
The DB's Scott Bixby notes that while some Democratic candidates are already calling for much of what the report suggests -- more refugee camps, more border patrol resources, and amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens -- many other progressive groups are going even more extreme.
The Dignity2020 Campaign, launched earlier this month in the hopes of influencing Democratic candidates on immigration, has called for the immediate legalization of all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States, and end to both immigrant detention and deportation, and the reunification of all families separated by deportation, including under previous administrations.
Calls for nationwide amnesty and the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the report counters, “only fuels louder calls for maximum enforcement, which then strengthen calls for abolition, ad infinitum.” Only by building a workable and human immigration system, Jawetz writes, can Democrats break the “cycle of extremes.”
As Ryan Girdusky pointed out on Twitter, is it really a surprise most Americans want to enforce the law and not give illegal aliens freebies?
SHOCK STUDY: Most Americans don’t want free healthcare for illegal aliens https://t.co/GltsNVKYPU
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) July 22, 2019
In conclusion, the study says that "It is not sustainable to have a legal immigration system that is not well tailored to the country’s needs and values and that predictably drives people to come to the country, or remain here, in violation of the law. It is not sustainable to have an immigration enforcement apparatus that lacks popular support; operates without the most basic features of fairness, accountability, and proportionality; and increasingly exposes to the threat of detention and deportation people who have been part of U.S. communities for decades and who the large majority of Americans have long believed should be afforded the opportunity to remain here permanently."