Migrants are the “lifeblood” of America, not Americans and their children, says former top Democrat Sen. Harry Reid.
“Immigrants are the lifeblood of our nation,” Reid said, ignoring the 4 million Americans who turn 18 this year in a homeland with 260 million Americans, 34 million legal immigrants and at least 11 million illegal migrants.
Migrants, he said, “are our power and our strength.”
Reid made the claim as he tried to slam President Donald Trump’s call on Oct. for a reform of the birthright citizenship rules.
Reid led the Senate Democrats until 2016. His elevation of migrants above Americans came shortly after President Donald Trump declared himself to be a pro-American nationalist.
But Reid’s praise for migrants and contempt for Americans is echoed by many Democrats, by progressive columnists, some GOP-affiliated columnists, and by many immigrant political activists.
For example, the Democrats’ leaders in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi declared in a lengthy speech in February 2018 that:
We’re a great country because we’re constantly reinvigorated by immigrants coming to our country. Their commitment and courage and commitment to the American dream which drew them here in the first place strengthened the American dream. As newcomers with all of that hope and aspiration, they make America more American when they come here and that’s why our country will not stagnate.
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Great things, discoveries in America came from immigrants coming here. Many of the great academic minds in our country came from another country. But then — at the same time America produced our own and that’s a pretty exciting combination.
Rep. Joe Kennedy, in an October article for Time magazine, tried to revive the claim that America is a “nation of immigrants,” not a nation of and for Americans and their children:
Few felt it as deeply as President John F. Kennedy. In his 1964 book A Nation of Immigrants, recently re-released, my great-uncle outlines the compelling case for immigration, in economic, moral, and global terms. “The abundant resources of this land provided the foundation for a great nation,” he writes. “But only people could make the opportunity a reality. Immigration provided the human resources.”
Many pro-migration advocates also argue that migrants are more important and productive than Americans:
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in January 2018:
Over all, America is suffering from a loss of dynamism. New business formation is down. Interstate mobility is down. Americans switch jobs less frequently and more Americans go through the day without ever leaving the house.
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Of course [Americans] react with defensive animosity to the immigrants who out-hustle and out-build them. You’d react negatively, too, if confronted with people who are better versions of what you wish you were yourself.
In June 2017, a former Wall Street Journal writer who is now working for the New York Times declared America belongs to immigrants because immigrants make the nation more powerful. Bret Stephens wrote:
I speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning…
Bottom line: So-called real Americans are screwing up America. Maybe they should leave, so that we can replace them with new and better ones: newcomers who are more appreciative of what the United States has to offer, more ambitious for themselves and their children, and more willing to sacrifice for the future.
Americans have no right to America, Stephens continued, saying:
We’re a country of immigrants — by and for them, too. Americans who don’t get it should get out.
In January 2018, the Washington Post’s (WaPo) op-ed editor, Fred Hiatt, declared:
Here’s the bottom line: I think we should remain open to immigrants because it’s part of who we are as a nation, because every generation of newcomers — even, or maybe especially, the ones who come with nothing but moxie and a tolerance for risk — has enriched and improved us …
A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline.
In February 2017, Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large of the D.C.-based Weekly Standard magazine, declared that population replacement would be the best for national power:
“Look, to be totally honest, if things are so bad as you say with the white working class, don’t you want to get new Americans in?
[I hope] this thing isn’t being videotaped or ever shown anywhere. Whatever tiny, pathetic future I have is going to totally collapse. You can make a case that America has been great because every — I think John Adams said this — basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico.
Stephens’ progressive and elitist peers have lauded the Hamilton musical, which portrays says American was founded by immigrants, not settlers, and that today’s immigrants as the rejuvenating diverse lifeblood of dull, white America. The play includes a song titled: “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done),” which glamorizes the imported, underpaid cheap-labor and sweatshops which serve Hamilton‘s wealthy ticket-buyers:
Pelso also said Americans owe a moral debt to illegals for bringing their children into the United States:
I say to their parents: Thank you for bringing these Dreamers to America. We’re in your debt for the courage it took, for you to take the risk, physically, politically, in every way, to do so.”
His Name Is So Damn Fitting Because He Is Truly A Dick
ICE is a “group of incompetents” and should focus on drug interdiction, not immigration enforcement, says the second-ranking Democratic Senator, Sen. Dick Durbin.
“Look at ICE — what a group of incompetents,” he told CNN on Saturday, adding:
At this point, they are focused more on toddlers than terrorists. They want, instead of deporting felons, they want to deport families that are being persecuted by criminal gangs … instead of focussing on stopping bad drugs coming in and stopping dirty drug money from going out, they’re focussed on separating kids from their families.
Durbin sought to capture progressives’ anger at President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal immigration, saying:
Be part of this election, don’t stay home and curse the television … Come on out, use your citizens’ right to vote. That is the most important thing … I think the American people are going to speak loudly.
CNN
✔@CNN
“Look at ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), what a group of incompetents. At this point they’re focused more on toddlers than terrorists,” says Sen. Dick Durbin at rally in Chicago https://cnn.it/2Kkgl2x
With the worst drug crisis in our nation’s history, ICE and DHS should spend their resources on keeping drugs out and stopping drug money from being exported to gangs and cartels south of the border.
Senator Dick Durbin
✔@SenatorDurbin
It’s clear that ICE is unprepared and seemingly unwilling to reunite the infants and kids they forcibly removed at the border. We need a different solution to this humanitarian crisis.
ICE now has more than 20,000 employees in more than 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries. The agency has an annual budget of approximately $6 billion, primarily devoted to three operational directorates – Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA). A fourth directorate – Management and Administration – supports the three operational branches to advance the ICE mission.
ICE’s efforts are focused on enforcing popular immigration laws, such as the laws requiring the removal of illegal migrants:
In FY2017, ICE ERO conducted 143,470 overall administrative arrests, which is the highest number of administrative arrests over the past three fiscal years. Of these arrests, 92 percent had a criminal conviction, a pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive or were processed with a reinstated final order. In FY2017, ICE conducted 226,119 removals. While this is a slight overall decrease from the prior fiscal year, the proportion of removals resulting from ICE arrests increased from 65,332, or 27 percent of total removals in FY2016 to 81,603, or 36 percent of total removals, in FY2017. These results clearly demonstrate profound, positive impact of the EO.
Without ICE, companies would be able to hire low-wage illegals instead of Americans, foreign children would crowd Americans’ kids from a good education, and real-estate costs would spike as foreigners rush to live in the peaceful, high-trust society built by Americans.
Durbin’s call for ICE to end enforcement was echoed by a statement from House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi. She “believes that ICE has been on the wrong end of far too many inhumane and unconstitutional practices to be allowed to continue without an immediate and fundamental overhaul,” said spokesman Drew Hammill, according to a report in the Washington Post.
“We do not think that protecting our border means putting children in cages,” Pelosi said June 28.
Durbin’s advocacy for mass-migration and for younger ‘dreamer’ illegals has caused the Democrats much political pain. He pushed forthe abortive budget-shutdown in January 2018, and for the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill in 2013 which helped the Democrats lose nine seats in 2014.
The Democrats’ top leader in the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer, is keeping his distance from the “Abolish ICE” campaign, even as the unpopular demand has been embraced by several Democratic Senators who may run for President in 2020.
He is instead using his Twitter account to tout Democrats’ promises on healthcare, guns, gay status, and claims that President Donald Trump is tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On the Abolish ICE campaign, Schumer is instead calling for a “czar” to focus media attention on “reunifying families.” That topic polls better for Democrats than ending immigration enforcement.
Chuck Schumer
✔@SenSchumer
The president has the power to appoint a czar to marshal & organize the agencies in charge of reunifying families. He should exercise that power, listen to all those marching today & clean up the mess he made w/ his slapdash family separation policy. #FamiliesBelongTogetherMarch
Democratic activists say the “Abolish ICE” campaign is not intended to open the borderswhich are guarded by the Customs and Border Protection agency. Instead, the activists say they hope to block ICE from deporting the economic migrants or refugees who get across the border, and who are seeking jobs and apartments as well as schools for their children.
But that no-deportations policy would allow many companies to hire illegals instead of Americans. That subsequent rush of millions of migrants would force down wages for Americans and for legal immigrants, spike stock values on Wall Street, force up rents and housing prices, and also overcrowd public K-12 schools.