by CHQ Staff
On Saturday afternoon President Trump delivered a brilliant speech on border security offering Democrats a path forward to end the standoff over the border wall and the partial government shutdown.
And, striking a conciliatory tone, Trump spread the blame to both political parties:
…our immigration system has been badly broken for a very long time. Over the decades, many Presidents and many lawmakers have come and gone, and no real progress has been made on immigration.
We are now living with the consequences – and they are tragic – brought about by decades of political stalemate, partisan gridlock, and national neglect.
And he was right about that, as anyone who has followed the immigration and border security debate over the past half-century will confirm.
Many conservatives were aghast at some of the details of the President’s proposal – an extension of Obama’s unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and an extension of temporary protected status for 300,000 Central Americans who are slated for deportation.
Our friends at NumbersUSA quickly issued a statement saying:
The offer the President announced today is a loser for the forgotten American workers who were central to his campaign promises. An amnesty-for-wall trade would once again reward previous immigration lawbreakers without preventing future immigration lawbreakers. This kind of amnesty deal will incentivize more caravans, more illegal border crossers and more visa overstayers at the expense of the most vulnerable American workers who have to compete with the illegal labor force.
Conservatives on social media panned the President’s offer as well. Ann Coulter tweeted: “100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals. So if we grant citizenship to a BILLION foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall.”
100 miles of border wall in exchange for amnestying millions of illegals. So if we grant citizenship to a BILLION foreigners, maybe we can finally get a full border wall.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) January 19, 2019
“Trading amnesty for future promises of enforcement is always a bad deal,” said RJ Hauman, government relations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Trading just a quarter of what you want for a couple Democrat amnesty priorities? Even worse. You must trade statutory changes for statutory changes, not for funding. The president should listen to his base, not Jared Kushner. One got you elected, the other [side] is dead set on making you a one-term president.”
James Carafano of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said in a statement that the Trump administration “should be applauded for its attempts to both secure our border and end the government shutdown.” But, he said, “including amnesty in the new proposal is not the way to do it.”
“The proposed compromise is not the best way forward,” he said according to reporting by Politico’s Quint Forgey.
However, they needn’t have worried – before the President Trump’s remarks had even faded from the ether, the Democrats rejected the President’s offer.
Pelosi said in a Saturday statement that the proposal was “a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives.”
“It is unlikely that any one of these provisions alone would pass the House, and taken together, they are a nonstarter,” she said. “For one thing, this proposal does not include the permanent solution for the Dreamers and TPS recipients that our country needs and supports.”
Although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pledged to bring the President’s proposal before the Senate for a vote this week, Democratic Minority Leader Senator Charles Schumer of New York also rejected the proposed deal.
Schumer on Sunday reemphasized the position of leading Democrats that the month-long government shutdown must end before they negotiate with President Trump on his border wall.
“That’s why we have three words for the president – open the government,” said Schumer, who further elaborated that Democrats would not negotiate as long as the partial government shutdown continued.
We are not in love with the extensions of DACA and TPS for aliens who fled from disasters decades ago and from which their home countries recovered long ago, but as we see it, that was not the point of President Trump’s proposal.
Trump’s Saturday speech and the proposed deal are all about politics, not policy. Democrats have been trying to sell the public on the idea that the shutdown is all Trump’s fault and that he is being unreasonable – the President, by his conciliatory tone and his repetition of the facts of the open borders disaster, turned that claim on its head.
What’s more, squishy Republicans, such as Senator Mitt Romney, were quick to embrace the President’s plan, with Romney tweeting:
.@POTUS has put forth a reasonable, good faith proposal that will reopen the government and help secure the border. I look forward to voting for it and will work to encourage my Republican and Democratic colleagues to do the same.
— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) January 19, 2019
Liberal Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who had previously expressed support for reopening the government without funding the wall, said she hoped that Mr. Trump’s offer would “lead to constructive debate that will end this impasse.”
Cutting off opposition from the Leftwing of the Republican Party is key to winning this battle in the face of the unified Democratic opposition; it keeps the wall part of the discussion and ensures that it will be in the Senate bill – the only legislative vehicle available for resolving the impasse.
Should Democrats kill the Trump proposal – as we believe they will – the President should feel empowered to begin to explore executive action to address the national security crisis at our southern border – including using the military to construct an effective border wall.
We urge all CHQ readers and friends to call the White House at 202-456-1111 or contact the President through this link. Tell President Trump you support his call for a wall and enhanced security on our southern border, and to hang tough – no wall – no deal.
