Radio America Online News Bureau

immigration

Americans Want Strong Borders, Waters Urges Unrest, George Will: Vote for Dems

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleasantly surprised to see a new CBS poll showing that a strong plurality of Americans believe families should stay together but be sent back to their home countries when they come to the U.S. illegally.  They also slam Rep. Maxine Waters for suggesting protesters should loudly confront every Trump administration cabinet member whether in restaurants or at the gas station.  And they categorically reject columnist George Will’s call for conservatives to vote Democrats into the majorities of the House and Senate as punishment for Republicans who refuse to stand up to President Trump.

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Cell Phone Search Warrants, Endless Protesting, Obama Had Trump’s Border Policy

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David French of National Review and Chad Benson of Radio America fill in for Jim Geraghty and Greg Corombos. They look at a U.S. district court decision that found the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional in structure. They commend Justice Roberts for joining the four liberal justices to protect Americans’ civil liberties from warrantless cell phone searches. They also consider the affects of incessant and inappropriate protesting. And they compare Trump’s new family detention policy to Obama’s, finding a difference only in outrage from activists and the media.

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Congress May Act on Immigration, Leftists Demand Open Borders, Nazi Hysteria

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David French of National Review and Chad Benson of Radio America fill in for Jim Geraghty and Greg Corombos. They hope that Congress may exert its constitutional authority by passing legislation to end the family separation policy, secure the border, and stop illegal immigration. They also fear the growing divide between conservatives and liberals as they each adopt more extreme policy positions. And they react to the insane comparisons between the U.S. border and Nazi concentration camps.

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Great Jobs Numbers, Virginia GOP Caves on Medicaid, Reid-ing Between the Lines

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America toast better-than-expected unemployment numbers, the best in 18 years.  They also lambaste Virginia Republicans for rolling over and approving the Obamacare Medicaid expansion they claimed to oppose for years.  And they dig through more eye-opening posts from Joy Reid’s supposedly hacked blog, including her likening of John McCain to the Virginia Tech shooter, endorsing the removal of the Israeli government to Europe, and likening illegal immigration to slave labor for multinationals.

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Freedom Caucus Demands DOJ Cooperation, Better GOP Leaders

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The House Freedom Caucus is increasingly frustrated with the Justice Department refusing to hand over documents critical to the investigation into the 2016 campaign and with its own Republican leadership on issues ranging from immigration to spending and more.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  He says the Justice Department is dragging its feet on turning over documents related to many different aspects of the 2016 campaign and the ongoing Mueller probe.

“(It’s) everything to be quite honest with you because the investigations into Hillary Clinton as well as the presidential campaign have shown there is egregious overreach here.  but one of the key points is what the scope of this (Mueller) investigation actually is.

“We see Mr. Mueller on a fishing expedition, trying to get anybody and everybody tagged into a crime that they create,” said Gosar.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C, is leading the charge for a second special counsel to be named so that person could impanel a grand jury and bring possible criminal charges on a range of issues.

However, Gosar says that is unlikely to happen since he believes the Justice Department is trying to “wait out the clock.”  When asked whether that meant letting the Mueller investigation play out or see if Democrats win a majority in one or both chambers of Congress, Gosar suggested it was both.

“A Pelosi-borne House cancels all these processes,” said Gosar, noting that his goal is to make sure “the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C, aren’t being held to a different standard than people out in the real world.”

Gosar and other House Freedom Caucus members are also furious with how Republican leaders are handling the immigration issue as proponents of a DACA amnesty near the 218 signatures needed to force the issue on the House floor.

The congressman blasts leadership for repeatedly promising to put the far more conservative Goodlatte bill on the floor for a vote but never making good on the vow.  That plan would only grant legal status to DACA enrollees, rather than a path to citizenship.  It would also limit chain migration to the immediate family, cancel the visa lottery, mandate E-Verify for all hires in the U.S. and beef up border security.

He also says leaders have reneged on promises to bring a bill to the floor focused solely on scrapping the visa lottery.

“Trust is a series of promises kept.  Leadership has drug its feet repeatedly on this aspect,” said Gosar.

GOP leaders are pleading with members not to sign the discharge petition, but Gosar says the alternative offered by leadership is equally unacceptable.

“We were presented with an idea.  They would go forward with the Goodlatte bill but we had to agree to a rule vote that not only brought up the Goodlatte bill but brought up an immigration bill to be named later as well.  No one in their right mind actually does that,” said Gosar.

Freedom Caucus members held up the latest farm bill in protest of the leadership’s performance on immigration but also to protest what they expect to be significant watering down of the farm bill in the Senate.

Gosar says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has no intention of fighting to keep welfare work requirements in the legislation but does plan to push hard for legalizing industrial hemp.

Gosar says it’s another example of leaders unilaterally deciding what legislation will look like, just as House and Senate leaders hammered out an agreement for the $1.3 trillion omnibus earlier this year.

The congressman says new GOP leadership is desperately needed but there will be no leadership elections anytime soon because current Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy cannot get 218 Republicans to support him.

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The One Issue that Could Keep GOP Base at Home in Midterms

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A rebel band of moderate Republicans in the House are on the verge of teaming with 200 Democrats to sidestep GOP leaders and advance legislation granting amnesty to people brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Led by Reps. Jeff Denham, R-Cal., and Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., at least 20 Republicans are on board with what’s known as a discharge petition.  If a majority of House members sign a petition in solidarity on a given issue, they can force the issue on the House floor in defiance of leadership in the majority party.

“That allows them to leapfrog over leadership and take control of the House floor, and (House Minority Whip) Steny Hoyer has promised them 200 Democrat votes.  Right off the bat, you’re scratching your head.  Why would 25 Republicans give the floor over to the Democrats to pass a bill,” said Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy are imploring Republicans not to join the discharge petition.  Brat, whose 2014 primary stunner over then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor was due largely to his tough stance on immigration, says Ryan and McCarthy know that this move could be lethal to the party in November.

“This is the one issue that has the capacity to keep our base at home in the elections coming up, which are just so critical,” said Brat, who is a prime target for Democrats in Virginia’s seventh congressional district.

If the discharge petition succeeds, supporters would then proceed to the “Queen of the Hill” strategy, which would allow for votes on four different measures that would address the fate of people in the country illegally but who are eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.  The bill getting the most votes would then advance to the Senate.

One option is the Goodlatte bill, which is favored by immigration hawks because it confers legal status but not a pathway to citizenship for DACA enrollees and does not grant legal status to those eligible for DACA but failed to enroll.  It would also limit chain migration, scrap the diversity lottery, tighten internal enforcement, mandate E-Verify to screen all job applicants and beef up border security.

But that bill doesn’t have enough votes to pass, and with 200 Democrats champing at the bit, it’s a clean amnesty bill that would attract the most votes.

“The one with the more Democrat votes wins.  The American people didn’t give the House and the Senate and the White House to Republicans in order to do a giant, huge amnesty bill,” said Brat, who says the amnesty plan would extend a lot farther than just the DACA enrollees.

“The Democrats would have an all-out amnesty bill, which grants amnesty to about four million folks and then ten million folks over ten years without any border control, without any E-Verify to make sure you’re having legal hiring, without taking any account of chain migration,” said Brat.

Brat says this discharge petition tactic shows the Democrats and their GOP allies cannot win an open debate and they must resort to other tactics to advance their agenda.

“Democrats know they can’t win politically.  They know they can’t win in the public realm on the exchange of ideas, so they try to do it behind the scenes with these tricky little procedures,” said Brat.

Brat says he’s surprised that 25 Republicans have not yet signed on to the discharge petition, noting “they have plenty more ready to roll” but wonders whether Ryan and McCarthy warning them about the possible midterm calamity caused some to back away from the idea.

The debate took on a new dimension this week when Democrats savaged President Trump for allegedly referring to illegal immigrants as “animals.”  Even when they learned the president was specifically discussing members of the Latin American MS-13 gang, known for sadistic murders and sex trafficking, some, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, still chided Trump for questioning the humanity of the gang members.

“When you have these people on record battering children over the heads with baseball bats and these gruesome activities, I think the left has to agree something has gone wrong with the humanity of that person,” said Brat.

Even if the discharge petition succeeds, the effort will not result in the bill becoming law.  The legislation would still require 60 votes to pass in the Senate and even then it would face a certain veto from President Trump.

While Brat hopes the issue won’t tank Republican hopes in the midterms, he says this issue and many others present a stark choice to voters in November.

“If you want more federal government running your life, vote Democrat, and if you want to return to all the principles that made the country great in the first place, vote for that,” said Brat.

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Media Malpractice: Good Guy with a Gun, ‘Animal’ Lies, Ignoring Hamas Admissions

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America take aim at three examples of egregious media bias.  They start with the heroism of Dixon High School (Ill.) school resource officer Mark Dallas, who saved countless lives in a would-be school shooting this week, yet the media glossed over the story since there was no body count and they have little interest in highlighting the effectiveness of a resource officer willing to engage the shooter.  They also slam the press for selectively quoting President Trump to make it seem he was referring to immigrants as “animals” when he was responding specifically to comment about the vicious Latin American gang MS-13.  And they throw up their hands as Hamas admits most of the people killed along the Israeli border were armed Hamas members and not random civilians and the media show no interest in reporting it.

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Uproar over Census Citizenship Question

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Democrats in multiple states are planning to sue the Trump administration to stop the 2020 U.S. census from asking whether people living in the U.S. are citizens, a move that may find initial success in the courts but may also be based on false assumptions.

The citizenship question appeared on every census form from 1820 through 1950.  From 1960 through 2000, it appeared on the long form sent to about one-sixth of U.S. residences.  2010 is the only census in the past 200 years not to include the question to anyone.

Nonetheless, left-leaning states like California and New York are headed to court to prevent the question from appearing on the census.

“Having an accurate Census count should be of the utmost importance for every Californian,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “The Census numbers provide the backbone for planning how our communities can grow and thrive in the coming decade. California simply has too much to lose for us to allow the Trump administration to botch this important decennial obligation.”

“This move directly targets states like New York that have large, thriving immigrant populations — threatening billions of dollars in federal funding for New York as well as fair representation in Congress and the electoral college,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

The concern from Becerra, Schneiderman and others is that people living in the U.S. who are either not citizens or not in the country legally will be far more reluctant to fill out the census, thus skewing the data received and depriving certain states the congressional representation they ought to have and the government spending it needs.

And while the U.S. census is under the control of the executive branch through the Commerce Department, don’t be surprised if the courts back the challengers.

“We’ll get a court to enjoin this.  There’s no question.  The reason for that is that if the Trump administration were to say the sky is blue, you could find a federal court at this point to enjoin that and say it’s not correct,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“There’s just so many judges out there who have a deep suspicion of every motive and every action of the administration, that’s they’ll find a reason,” said Camarota, who says the likely verdict of the Supreme Court on this is less clear.

But while plenty of attention has been paid to the blowback from Democrats, why is the Commerce Department adding this question back into the census?

“It came at the request of the Justice Department, which said that we’d really like to have this question because it would be helpful in enforcing voting rights law,” said Camarota.

At issue is greater scrutiny of racial and ethnic gerrymandering and whether the drawing of legislative districts is putting certain people under a greater burden to get to the polls.

“You’re allowed to gerrymander for political reasons but you’re not allowed to explicitly try to dilute political power among different racial minorities.  Or another example is the placement of a polling place.  You can have a situation where minorities are all in one part of the area but the polling place is very far away and very inconvenient,” said Camarota.

“The same kind of thing could apply to naturalized citizens.  Does the placement of polling places or does the gerrymandering tend to dilute or make difficult the voting of naturalized citizens.  That’s why you would ask the question they’re planning on asking,” added Camarota.

While the reaction to the citizenship question is falling largely along party lines, Camarota says on the surface it is reasonable to wonder it will lead to fewer responses and less accurate data..

“The question is does the benefit you get by asking this question offset the risk that you might reduce the quality of Census Bureau data,” said Camarota.  “I think it’s not an unreasonable concern.  I think it’s an open question.”

That being said, Camarota says the best evidence suggests there probably would not be much of a drop off, if any, if the question is added to the census based on what we see with other surveys.

“Every year we do what’s called the American Community Survey.  It shoots for about one and a half to two percent of the population and they ask all these detailed questions, several related to citizenship.  The second survey we have is the Current Population Survey.  It’s done every month.  It’s where we get the unemployment numbers.  It has also been asking about citizenship for many years now,” said Camarota.

He says Trump’s campaign and presidency seem to have little or no impact on the response rate.

“The argument is that there’s a kind of Trump effect, that in the new context of increased immigration enforcement, now we’re really going to see people respond (at different rates).  You don’t really see it.

“With the American Community Survey, Trump ran for office and won office in 2016, but the share of people who refused to take the survey didn’t change between ’15 and ’16, which is what you’d expect if people were reluctant to answer these questions,” said Camarota.

He says the rate of response is trending down but that development began long before Trump’s political rise.  In addition, the same pattern can be seen on the monthly surveys.

“You’d think they’d be really reluctant to answer the question and you can do an analysis to see if in fact people are not answering that question, leaving it blank or what have you.  There’s been no rise.

“Even if you try to put on a graph the months in which Trump did well – he announced his candidacy, or won the nomination, or won the presidency – and then look at several months after, there’s just no change in the continuity of the data,” said Camarota.

According to Camarota, the evidence just isn’t there to suggest returning the question to the census will skew the results.

“That would tend to undermine the idea that putting this question on is going to make much difference one way or the other.  I think it is harder and harder to gather data.  I think that has to do with the decline in trust for government.  It has to do with the decline in civic mindedness.  People don’t see it so much as their civic responsibility anymore.

“I think those things are true, but I don’t think it has much to do with the citizenship question,” said Camarota.

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Immigration Stalemate

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The U.S. Senate rejected multiple attempts at immigration reform legislation, suggesting it is unlikely Congress can reach a deal this year that tightens up the nation’s immigration system and also clarifies the future for those holding legal status under the expiring DACA program.

President Trump announced last year that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program would expire in March 2018.  DACA is the 2012 initiative taken by President Obama to grant legal status to people in the U.S. who were brought here illegally as children.  Roughly 700,000 enrolled in DACA.

In announcing the end of DACA, President Trump made it clear he wanted Congress to address the issue through legislation and use the opportunity to make changes in immigration law such as ending the visa lottery and significantly reducing chain migration, by which family members can be sponsored by new citizens to come to the U.S.

Democrats want nothing to do with that approach, insisting only a “clean” DACA fix of simply granting legal status and a pathway to citizenship is acceptable.

In January, Democrats ended a brief government shutdown after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised to allow debate on the issue in the weeks to come.  That promise was kept last week, but no bill was able to get the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a final vote.

There is little likelihood that stalemate will be broken anytime soon.

“It’s unclear what will happen now, probably not much,” said Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Only 39 senators voted for the bill most closely resembling President Trump’s wish list.  He wants a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million people, which includes DACA recipients and those who qualify but never enrolled.  Trump would also scrap the visa lottery and limit the chain migration policy to spouses and minor children.

He also wants $25 billion to secure the border and begin constructing major portions of a border wall.

The highly-touted “bipartisan” bill sponsored by Republicans Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., fell six votes short of the 60-vote threshold.  It kept the 1.8 million number in place as well as $25 billion in border security.

However, Camarota says it fell far short in reforming the legal immigration system.

“It did not have any ending or phasing out of the chain migration categories.  And it had other things, like how priorities on enforcement would move forward and it seemed it was going to make it more difficult to enforce the law in some other areas.  So while the border might be more secure, the interior might be less secure,” said Camarota.

So why did the bill Camarota considers weaker than the Trump-backed measure get 15 more votes in a GOP-controlled Senate?  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says many in his party are now to the left of Barack Obama on immigration, at least compared to the parameters Obama imposed on DACA.

Camarota sees Cruz as hyperbolic in that comparison given that Obama wanted legal status and a pathway to citizenship for 10-11 million people in the U.S. illegally.  But he says Cruz does bring up an important point.

“His basic insight is not ridiculous.  If you’re the party of enforcement against amnesty, the president was agreeing to a pretty generous amnesty of 1.8 million.

“I think the reason he did that, and this is the way politics works and you have to decide what you think of it.  He thought it was the only way he could get the things that he wanted, like the reform of the legal immigration system and the wall.  The hope was that this trade-off would go through, but some of his own party and the Democrats didn’t want it,” said Camarota.

And what do the Democrats want?

“The Democrats are pretty unified that they want to keep immigration (numbers) as high as possible, letting the most number of people in and increase it.  (They want) as expansive an amnesty as possible and tend to not want to spend more on enforcement.  There are a lot of Republicans who tend to support that agenda,” said Camarota.

While the Center for Immigration Studies likes Trump’s efforts to limit chain migration, Camarota says the group has major misgivings about the president’s willingness to place the so-called Dreamers on a path to citizenship.

“One of the reasons you want to reform the chain migration system or give citizenship to DACA members is that pretty quickly it means they might be able to sponsor their parents, and the parents are the ones who brought them here.

“The whole idea of a DACA amnesty was that we’ll do this for people who aren’t to blame, but eventually it means amnesty for everyone who is to blame unless you end those categories.  Don’t allow people to sponsor their parents to come in or don’t give citizenship to the DACA recipents,” said Camarota.

With just two weeks until DACA is rescinded, Camarota says the courts may end up having a critical say in how this debate plays out.

“Although the DACA program is ending so people will not be able to renew, more than one judge as ruled – crazy as it may sound – that although it was a discretionary policy and that’s how it was sold, that the administration can’t end the program,” said Camarota.

“If, which seems likely, the administration can overcome the ridiculous judicial activism that says they can’t end the program, then it would put more pressure on Democrats and then we might see some meaningful reform,” said Camarota.

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Space X Success, Big Spending Republicans, Pelosi on Race & Immigration

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America pause to cheer the Falcon Heavy rocket launch by Space X this week and David hopes it sparks more aspirational innovation that our nation so sorely needs.  They also grimace as Republican majorities are preparing to jack up spending significantly over the next couple of years, even though some positive elements are included in the budget bill.  And they sigh as Nancy Pelosi uses part of her marathon floor speech on immigration policy to say her young grandson blew out his birthday candles and wished he could look like his friend from Guatemala.

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