WASHINGTON – Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin predicted the “death of the GOP” and a “permanent ruling majority for the Democrat Party” if President Trump signs a bill into law that provides a path to citizenship or “amnesty” for DREAMers.
“To borrow Nancy Pelosi’s phrase [on the tax bill] in a different context, it will be Armageddon. It will be, and it’s not 800,000 – it’s probably at least 3 million [DREAMers] and then on top of that, of course, you’ve got Republicans and Democrats talking about chain migration allowances for the parents of those DACA recipients and those are clearly illegal alien parents who would be rewarded as well. The consequence would be a permanent ruling majority for the Democrat Party – death of the GOP,” Malkin told PJM last week after introducing James O’Keefe during an event marking the release of his new book, American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News.
Trump’s latest immigration proposal includes a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals beneficiaries in 10-12 years if certain requirements are met in exchange for federal funding of additional barriers or “walls” along the southwest border, limits on family reunification or “chain migration” and elimination of the visa lottery. Trump’s plan would cover 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, which includes up to 800,000 who registered and qualified for President Obama’s DACA program and were issued work permits.
Malkin said offering legal status or a path to citizenship to DREAMers would have “long-term ramifications” for the GOP.
“I think that it requires a very bold, active political jujitsu and that, in turn, requires intestinal fortitude to face head-on the onslaught of accusations of being racist or nativist, and the Republican Party establishment in D.C. has proven to be woefully unprepared and unequipped to deal with the only card that the Democrats have left to play on this matter. So in terms of who’s holding the line, we’ve seen all the articles about all of these Senate Republicans blaming Steve Miller – thank God for Steve Miller is all I have to say,” Malkin said of the White House adviser.
“As long as we have patriots like that who have the close ear of President Trump, I can breathe a little bit easier at night – and I have to say that there is no other candidate in the field that I could have said that about,” she added. “I’m talking about the GOP. They would have caved by now – any of the other Republicans.”
Malkin said the GOP’s handling of the DACA issue is significant enough to cause Trump to lose re-election.
“Yes, this is the signature item on his platform; it’s do-or-die on this. There are other aspects of this deal that are so important, which is why even among immigration enforcement activists you’ve had willingness to even entertain the idea of a DACA deal,” she said.
“I mean, we are so much closer now and even to be able to talk about ending chain migration – people do not appreciate just how far we’ve come that we can talk about it out loud and that is the expansion of the Overton window that I would have never envisioned,” she added. “And again, I have to really reiterate that we would have never had under any other Republican candidate had they been able to beat Hillary.”
Malkin said preventing illegal immigration is a matter of national security and economic security. She questioned why there aren’t any Democrats discussing the impact of “massive illegal immigration” on wages in the U.S.
“Why don’t we have a single black Democrat, for example, who talks about the impact on wages of massive illegal immigration? Why isn’t there a single Democrat of any color who champions the Disney workers or the SoCal Edison workers?” Malkin asked. “Everybody in both parties in Washington talks about how they champion high-skilled workers and the need for STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] education. I mean, anybody who goes through and get a STEM diploma right now is a chump because they could be the next Disney workers who are laid off and forced to retrain their foreign replacements. It is such a gimme for an independent Democrat maverick to take up this mantle and they don’t want it because they’d rather get the moula from the open borders lobby.”
Under current law, a permanent resident can apply for citizenship after maintaining their legal status for five years. Once they earn their citizenship, they can petition for their immediate relatives to obtain permanent residency. Malkin said she disagrees with the Democrats and Republicans who argue that DREAMers should be offered a path to citizenship because they were brought to the U.S. through no fault of their own.
“So the mistake of the DREAMer Republicans, I guess I’ll call that faction of the Republican Party, is to concede that rhetorical point in the first place. If illegal immigrant parents didn’t want to split up their families in the first place, they shouldn’t have made that decision at the get-go because they knew it was a risk from the minute they stepped foot into this country illegally – that someway, somehow, the ball might possibly catch up to them,” she said.
Malkin argued that supporting increased immigration law enforcement is not racist. During her appearance at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) conference, the pundit said she has met people of “all colors and all backgrounds, all nationalities and naturalized immigrants who stand behind strict immigration enforcement.”
“The Republican Party is so afraid of being perceived as lacking compassion, that they have not had the ability to perform any logical jujitsu, because you could just as easily turn around and say, ‘What about all of the of the law-abiding American families or law-abiding legal immigrants’ families who’ve been permanently separated because illegal alien crime took a relative or friend away from them?’” she said.
“It’s disgraceful to me that you’ve got these DREAMers who are able to lobby on Capitol Hill and get on The View, for example, but the families of illegal alien crime, the ones that were on stage with President Trump, have to fight and struggle to get their voices heard,” she added.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has expressed opposition to Trump’s latest proposal on immigration, mainly over federal funding of a border wall system.
Democrats such as Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, but the border fencing was not finished. Malkin said she saw the need for more barriers on the border during her most recent trip to Arizona.
“I was in Arizona over the summer and spent time in Sierra Vista along the Arizona-Mexico border. John Ladd is very prominent as one of the ranchers who has been very outspoken and on his property you can see the 18-foot, double-layered fence,” she said. “I called it FINO, fence in name only, and so now again they just recycle the same legislation. ‘We’re going to have 700 miles’; well, you haven’t finished the 700 on the other one. Come on, let’s go, and then you see the drop-off – and there’s nothing like actually seeing the visual of it,” she added.
Malkin said she saw areas of the U.S.-Mexico border where there was high fencing, followed by lower fencing, followed by no fencing at all.
“You see the 18 [foot] and then you see the 13-foot, and you know you can just use wire cutters and get right across it,” she said. “And then there’s nothing and then even, with 18-foot ,it was so fantastically hilarious – we’re walking along the perimeter of where John Ladd’s property is and the flood channels are open, and anybody can just crawl right through because there’s not enough Border Patrol agents at the frickin’ border, pardon my French, because they’re all hours away in Phoenix or Tucson or whatever sitting in air-conditioned offices.”
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