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‘I’m Afraid the President is Getting Rolled’

September 14, 2017 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/9-14-krikorian-blog.mp3

President Trump and Democratic Party leaders in Congress say they are closing in on a deal that would have Congress enshrining the legal status of illegal immigrants who came here as children in exchange for what Trump calls “massive border security,” but a leading immigration activist thinks the president is getting snookered.

“I’m afraid the president is getting rolled,” said Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian.  “He simply let (Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer set the terms of this debate.”

Trump met with Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Wednesday night at the White House to discuss the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.  Following the meeting, Schumer and Pelosi released a statement suggesting a deal was done to approve legislation to give young people here illegally and enrolled in the program permanent legal status.

Trump later tweeted that there was not a done deal and all later said the details still needed to be worked out on border security, although the Democrats reiterated that they would not approve funding to build a wall on the southern border.

Krikorian says Schumer has the upper hand in this debate, as he’s been immersed in it for decades.

“Chuck Schumer has been doing immigration for 30 years.  He was responsible for the 1986 amnesty, the last push to get it over.  He was in the House of Representatives then,” said Krikorian.  “He was the motivating force behind the Gang of Eight that passed the Senate.”

Krikorian says Trump is not well-versed at all in immigration policy and he can see Schumer winning Trump over in the language Trump is now using.

“President Trump doesn’t know anything about the immigration issue.  So Schumer tells him, ‘This wouldn’t be an amnesty, Mr. President, because they wouldn’t get citizenship.’  Trump just mouths those cliches that we have been hearing now for years that are straight out false,” said Krikorian.

“The president has no idea about any of this stuff.  I am happy to stipulate that he is good at real estate deals.  That may well be the case.  But dealing with mob and labor bosses and crooked building inspectors, those guys are much more reliable negotiating partners than Chuck Schumer.  The president is like a babe in the woods.  He’s getting taken for a ride,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian suspects the challenge for Trump is getting even steeper given the myriad of staff changes that leave very few immigration hawks in the White House.

“Everybody with a position of authority is either a liberal Democrat or is a non-political retired general who really don’t have strong political views.  They just want to see things fixed and work better.  And that’s a recipe for the president alienating himself from his base,” said Krikorian.

He says Trump and everyone else in the debate needs to see that granting permanent legal status to young illegal immigrants enrolled in DACA amounts to amnesty and they must proceed accordingly.

“Every amnesty – and that’s what this is is an amnesty, if you let illegals stay that’s an amnesty – every one always draws new illegal immigration into the country and then causes a surge of legal immigration down the stream as their relatives come in,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian believes Obama’s creation of DACA through the executive branch in 2012 was blatantly illegal, but he says that’s not the fault of the people who enrolled and the humanitarian thing to do is to make good on that promise.

However, he says only those actually enrolled in DACA, and not all illegal immigrants brought here as young children, should be considered for the legislation.  He also urges businesses to use the E-Verify system to check the immigration status of job applicants and for the government to crack down on employers who knowingly hire people in the U.S. illegally.

Krikorian urges Trump to use this moment to make tough demands of Democrats in exchange for relenting on DACA.

“What kind of provisions do you include in a bill like that to make sure that an amnesty that  may be 700,000 or 800,000 people doesn’t do more harm than good,” said Krikorian.

He strongly encourages Trump and congressional Republicans to insist that portions of the RAISE Act be included in any bill.  In addition to favoring prospective immigrants with college educations and the ability to provide for themselves, the legislation would also tighten which family members could later be brought in by immigrants.

Krikorian says giving DACA enrollees the ability to confer legal status on their parents must be prevented.

“Their parents knew what they were doing when they came here.  They weren’t children.  They don’t deserve the benefit from this amnesty, so what we need is to change the family immigration system so that it only focuses on husbands, wives, and little kids and not all these other adult relative categories we have now,” said Krikorian.

And he says all of this must be included in the same legislation as the enactment of DACA or the Democrats will win everything they want in exchange for nothing.

“It absolutely has to be in one piece.  If they get everything they want then it’ll be just like 1986, where they got their amnesty first and the enforcement never happened,” said Krikorian.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: amnesty, Chuck Schumer, DACA, families, illegal, immigration, legal, news, President Trump

Immigration Battle Awaits Congress Upon Return

August 23, 2017 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/8-23-camarota-blog.mp3

Along with tax reform, the debt ceiling, spending bills, and maybe another crack at health care legislation, Congress also has the chance to address immigration policy, and a leading advocate of tougher immigration standards says compromises can be made so long as the most important elements wind up in the final bill.

Center for Immigration Reform Research Director Steven Camarota says President Trump has already improved our homeland security and positioned the country better for reform simply by enforcing the laws on the books.

“Having Trump in there, whatever else you may think of him, he’s pushing enforcement.  He’s going after illegal immigrants and those who are criminal aliens.  He’s trying to increase work site enforcement and get the cooperation of local law enforcement.  All of that makes sense and that’s a very big deal,” said Camarota.

But he says enforcement of current laws only goes so far.

“It doesn’t do that much to address the overall issue of numbers.  How many people can we assimilate?  What is the absorption capacity of America’s physical infrastructure?  What is the absorption capacity of schools?  That’s why numbers all matter so much,” said Camarota.

“Unless we start bringing the legal numbers, which are enormous and account for three-fourth’s of all immigrants, we’re not going to deal with many of the problems the country faces stemming from immigration,” said Camarota.

Earlier this summer, President Trump introduced the RAISE Act, which most notably lower levels of legal immigration and also require immigrants to be able to support themselves financially and be proficient in English.

A quick head count of the Senate shows that bill essentially dead on arrival.  In  addition to most or all Democrats lining up against the legislation, several Republicans are also balking at it, including members of the 2013 Gang of Eight, such as John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

But Camarota believes a good bill can still get done and he is willing to offer a major priority of Democrats as enticement.

“One of the ways it might pass is if it were part of a compromise that gave some kind of legal status to those illegal immigrants who came at young ages in return for the provisions of the RAISE Act.  These are the people currently covered by the program called DACA (often called ‘Dreamers’),” said Camarota.

But Camarota was very clear about what he believes needs to be in the bill.

“Obviously, (we need) enforcement, controlling the border, going after the employers who hire people who are illegally here, and an entry-exit system that records the arrival and departure of people,” said Camarota.

“Foreigners come into the United States 200 million times or more a year on a time-limited basis.  That means they have a temporary visa, a tourist, a guest worker, a foreign student.  We don’t keep track of the time we’re here, so we don’t know if the time limit has been honored,” said Camarota.

Camarota would also like to see a much stricter definition of family members who can be allowed in, primarily limiting the option to spouses and dependent children.

However, he also says the benefits of immigration to the immigrant, and not just the nation, ought to considered.

“I realize that the immigrants themselves may benefit by coming here and maybe that’s something to think about.  Maybe that’s why we should continue to have a reasonable pace of immigration.  But it doesn’t, to my mind, justify, the enormous amount of legal immigration, nor does it justify tolerating illegal immigration,” said Camarota.

The immigration issue is a political tinder box right now.  The debates over the Trump travel bans grew very intense that will likely spill over into this struggle.  Camarota says Trump brings good and bad qualities into this debate.

“To his credit, Trump has at least been willing to address some of the big issues.  Not to his credit, he has not done so in a careful and sensitive way and he’s contributed in that way to polarization,” said Camarota.

But he says it’s not just Trump who has to take a more sober look at this debate.

“Careful, intelligent, fact-based discourse is hard for most people and a polarized environment makes it harder,” said Camarota.

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: enforcement, immigration, legal, news, Senate, Trump

The Problem with Puzder

December 16, 2016 by GregC

http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/12-16-krikorian-blog.mp3

Many of Donald Trump’s cabinet selections are getting strong reviews from grassroots activists and traditional Republicans, but a leading immigration expert says Trump’s choice to head the Department of Labor could be a threat to American jobs.

Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian sees fast food titan Andrew Puzder as a problem across the board on immigration, but he says his biggest concern with a Puzder-led Labor Department is the influx of legal immigrants who could put American citizens out of work.

“The primary problem is you have to get the okay from the Labor Department before you can bring in one of these people on worker visas.  There’s something like three quarters of a million people we bring in.  These are people who are often directly replacing American workers,” said Krikorian.

“We saw this at Disney about a year-and-a-half ago.  We just saw it with Carnival Cruise Lines, I think just this week.  They fired their American workers, usually their IT workforce.  They bring in foreign workers on visas that have been okayed by the Labor Department.  And then (the American workers) are forced to train their replacements,” said Krikorian.

While that does happen with some frequency, Krikorian says the big picture is murkier and there are no hard numbers on how many Americans lose their jobs to legal immigrants.

“It’s never a one-to-one thing.  You can’t say that one immigrant worker comes in and that means one fewer job for an American.  The economy doesn’t really work that way,” said Krikorian.  “There’s no way to say this guy lost his job because of that guy.  It doesn’t work that way.”

However, Krikorian says it is clear which Americans are most at risk of losing their jobs through the importing of foreign workers.

“At the bottom of the labor market, and that means less-skilled workers and that means teenagers looking for work and others – people who get out of prison and want to clean up their act,” said Krikorian.  “Anybody who’s getting on to the first rung of the job ladder.  Those people are hurt by ongoing immigration,” he said.

So where does Puzder fit into all this?  Krikorian says Puzder has long been an outspoken proponent of bring in foreign workers.

“Andy Puzder has for years shown himself to be a big fan of importing more and more and more and more foreign guest workers to compete with Americans,” said Krikorian.

He also sees Puzder as being on the wrong side of the most recent congressional fight over immigration reform.

“[Puzder supported] that Gang of Eight bill from a few years ago that would have amnestied illegal aliens – the one Rubio and Schumer and Obama were pushing.  It would have amnestied illegal aliens, would have hugely increased legal immigration, almost doubled it, and supposedly would have enforced the law better at some point down the road,” said Krikorian.

He says Puzder also weighed in on immigration policy during the 2016 campaign.

“Just last year he made a press statement with several other people, calling on the Republican primary candidates to support so-called comprehensive immigration reform, in other words Obama’s immigration agenda,” said Krikorian.

In response to criticism of Puzder’s previous immigration pronouncements, the Trump transition is trying to assure skeptics they have nothing to worry about.

“A statement was issued under his name, which I think was pretty clearly written by the campaign, that said he would be tough in protecting American workers and that sort of thing.  Maybe.  I’m skeptical because his whole life has actually been the opposite so why would we believe in this sudden change,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian says Trump’s vision on legal immigration has always been a bit fuzzy but that the president-elect has made several strong promises.

“He’s always been kind of shifty on this and vague, but he has been very clear that these visa programs must never be used to replace American workers.  And the law allows that now,” said Krikorian.

Other members of Trump’s cabinet who will deal directly with immigration issues are getting rave reviews, especially Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the nominee for attorney general.

“Jeff Sessions is a top pick.  He has the potential to be the best attorney general in American history.  I have great respect for Jeff Sessions.  I think he’s going to be great across the board at the Justice Department, both immigration stuff and everything else,” said Krikorian.

Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly is Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security.  Krikorian says Kelly is a well-known “border hawk” but isn’t sure how he will approach concerns over legal immigrants overstaying their visas or making sure businesses do not hire people in the U.S. illegally.

“I don’t have any reason to think he’ll be bad on that but he doesn’t have any experience on it so we’re going to have to wait and see how he does,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian admits Puzder will likely be confirmed by the Senate.  It’s only then that America will find out if his new assurances or his old positions carry the day.

“Supposedly he’s seen the light,” said Krikorian.  “We’ll have to see whether that’s true or not.”

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Filed Under: News & Politics, Podcasts Tagged With: illegal, immigration, Kelly, legal, news, Puzder, Sessions, Trump, visas

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