The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
With the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown now relegated to history, Congress must focus on actually fixing our broken immigration system. . . . [T]his should be an opportunity for Congress to dust off the bipartisan immigration proposals of the past and improve on them. Ultimately, comprehensive immigration reform must include a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the country without legal permission.
In particular, people brought to the country illegally as children—commonly known as dreamers—need more than an extra few months of assurance that they won’t be deported. The president also should abandon attempts to clamp down further on asylum seekers, something he floated in the waning days of the partial government shutdown. . . .
Above all, the president should not seek to invoke emergency powers to try to build his wall. Such a move would not only be legally questionable but could derail bipartisan progress toward more effective solutions at the border. – Focus on Real, Bipartisan Immigration Reform, The Seattle Times, Editorial Board, 1/29/19 [Link]
Fact Check of Quote: Proposing to grant amnesty and a path to citizenship for all illegal aliens in the U.S. is a plan to make our broken immigration system even more broken. What possible connection could such a proposal, which rewards people for breaking our law, have to genuine immigration reform? If we reward bad behavior, we will certainly encourage more of it. Promoting illegal immigration can never be part of a strategy to combat it.
Some say that amnesty for “dreamers” is another matter because these are people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children by their parents or other adults. We should give them a break, the argument goes, because they did not intentionally break the law.
Perhaps some arrangement can be made for them, but granting it should entail concessions for immigration restriction. One should be a change in immigration law to limit the number of parents and siblings that immigrants can sponsor for permanent residence. If dreamers can be amnestied, it does not follow that their relatives should benefit—particularly the parents who knowingly broke the law by bringing the dreamers to this country.
President Trump has not tried to “crack down” on genuine asylum seekers, but he and his administration have worked, against great opposition, to prevent illegal aliens from using bogus claims of asylum to gain access to our country. This effort must continue.
This editorial says that the president should seek “bipartisan” solutions to border control, rather than a declaration of emergency powers. But it is plain that most Democrats and some members of his own party are not really interested in border control. That being the case, an emergency declaration may well be in order.