Democrats’ DACA scam: Keeping Dreamers in limbo for political power

01/19/18 03:15 PM EST



DACA Dreamers, don’t be fooled. Democrats’ efforts to “save” you from deportation appear compassionate and feel new. But they actually have much to do with political calculation and appear to be yet another page from the playbook they’ve been using for almost a decade now to keep your status in suspension.

In 2009, Democrats controlled the White House with a popular new president, controlled the House with a substantial majority and even had a near-filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

They could have helped the Dreamers then, but they opted instead to pass health care legislation, then tried to keep the people who cared about your issue on the team with promises to take up immigration after the 2010 midterms.

But Democrats lost control of the House that year and the Senate in 2012. Unable to get legislation through Congress, President Obama created DACA by executive order. He repeatedly called it a temporary and stopgap measure and seemed unsure of its constitutionality himself. Remember “I’m president, I am not king”?

President Trump wants to make that right and return the responsibility for setting immigration policy to the people’s representatives in Congress, as evidenced by his recent decision to return 200,000 people to El Salvador who came here more than a decade ago after an earthquake.

He has offered repeatedly to work with Congress to fix DACA — a position that goes against many in his base. But the Democrats in Congress are preventing progress — and for the same reason they did in 2010, to improve their prospects in the midterm elections.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund, which is at the center of the policy world on the Democratic side, laid it out in a memo to members earlier this month. “The fight to protect Dreamers … is also a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success…,” it read. “If Democrats don’t try to do everything in their power to defend Dreamers, that will jeopardize Democrats’ electoral chances in 2018 and beyond.”

The Dreamers, as Victor Davis Hanson points out, are merely “politically photogenic and for now seen as the easiest group to exempt from efforts to control illegal immigration.”

But their average age is 24, their median hourly salary is $15.34. Fewer than 5 percent have graduated college, few have even tried to become citizens and fewer than 900 out of 800,000 serve in the military. There is no reason for them to be placed in line ahead of other applicants.

The idea is to establish and strengthen the line. It’s not easy. America is $20 trillion in debt, and illegal immigrants cost us $135 billion per year. But Democrats believe an exception for Dreamers now will lead to exceptions for others later — “all,” Hanson says, “expecting the same eventual exemptions.”

They’re trying through the courts, arguing implausibly that President Trump does not have the same power to rescind DACA that President Obama used to establish it. They’re trying through the political process — turning down deals that would accomplish the objective solely because, as the Washington Examiner stated, it “would take it off the table as a campaign issue during the midterm elections this November.”

This is not about compassion. It’s about votes. It’s about the southwest corner of the country turning purple from all the immigrant voters. It’s about a generational shift that overcomes the Trump majority with open borders and relaxed voting laws.

It’s about raw political power, which means, as Tucker Carlson pointed out, importing “more Democratic voters by any means necessary.”

Ford O'Connell is the chairman of CivicForumPAC, worked on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, and authored the book "Hail Mary: The 10-Step Playbook for Republican Recovery." Follow him on Twitter @FordOConnell.

http://thehill.com/opinion/immigrati...rats-daca-scam