What a difference a few years has made for Democrats on illegal immigration. A few years and about a bonanza of new voters, that is.
As the deluge of 14,000 Central Americans rolls toward our border, Fox News provided a helpful reminder of what Democrats used to say about illegal immigration versus what they say now.
Of course, what they said about it might not be what they believed. But at least they paid lip service to secure borders.
Famous Last Words on Illegals
On Tuesday, Fox noted, Trump tweeted a video featuring his predecessor, then Senator Barack Hussein Obama, whose uncle and aunt were illegal aliens.
“I agree with President Obama 100%” The Donald wrote.
“Those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law,” Obama averred in 2005.
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants into this country,” Obama said.
But Trump also could have shared, Fox observed, Obama’s view that illegals should go to the “back of the line.”
“Real reform means strong border security,” Obama said during his State of the Union address in 2013, and “passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally.”
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Obama spent his second term undermining our borders with his unilateral amnesty and other actions, but again, at least he talked a good game.
In 2009, leftist Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Fox recalled, “sounded like Trump on immigration.”
Schumer bashed Trump’s very liberal proposal to legalize two million illegals called “Dreamers” because the plan including funding for a border wall.
But years ago, he wasn’t such a friend of border jumpers himself: “First, illegal immigration is wrong … and a primary goal of comprehensive immigration reform must be to dramatically curtail future illegal immigration.”
On the other side of the Hill, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Trump’s immigration plan was a “campaign to Make America White Again” and more recently said building the wall was a “manhood” issue for Trump.
Ten years ago, Fox reported, she was quite clear about illegal immigration: “We do need to address the issue of immigration and the challenge we have of undocumented people in our country. We certainly do not want any more coming in.”
Two more Democrats who sounded a lot like Trump? Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said illegals were “competition for space” and jobs, and then campaigned in 1994 has having “led the fight to stop illegal immigration.” Said President Bill Clinton during his State of the Union addres in 1995, “It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.”
Immigrants Vote for Democrats
If one wonders why Democrats don’t much care for border security, whatever they say about it, look to the voting booth for the answer: Immigrants, the data show, vote for Democrats.
Last year, immigration expert Jason Richwine explained in National Review that American immigration policy is killing the GOP.
“The political ramifications of mass immigration have become difficult to ignore,” he wrote. “One need not be a partisan or a cynic to believe that the term ‘undocumented Democrat’ is not merely a conservative epithet but in fact exactly the way Chuck Schumer and other Democratic leaders look on illegal immigrants in the U.S. today. The problem is not just with amnesty but with the structure of our legal-immigration system. Because of family preferences, immigration begets more immigration — a fact of which Schumer is keenly aware.”
Continued Richwine:
The political impact of immigration today is fairly clear. The foreign-born gave about two-thirds of their votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016, as did Asian and Hispanic Americans (both immigrant and native), whose explosive demographic growth is rooted almost entirely in immigration from over past 50 years, most of it legal. Asians and Hispanics supplied roughly 20 percent of Clinton’s vote total — close to the contribution made by black Americans, who have long been considered an indispensable part of the Democratic coalition.
Look for the Left to smear Trump as a racist again if he closes the border to the 14,000 new Democrats heading this way.
