Is trading amnesty for immigration enforcement a wise idea? (DREAMers, Trump Wall)

The idea of trading amnesty for immigration enforcement is in fact a very dumb idea. It's also completely unnecessary to achieve the goal it's supposedly designed to achieve.

If Donald Trump made such a deal, we'd end up getting amnesty and little or no enforcement. That's what happened after the 1986 amnesty, and nothing fundamentally has changed.

Mass immigration is a key agenda item for those in the U.S. who hold power: the business elites, the media elites, the political elites, non-profit groups, and on and on. They might agree to increased immigration enforcement initially, but nearly as soon as the ink was dry on the legislation they'd begin pushing to weaken the "tough" provisions. Past amnesty proposals have included loopholes, such as a panel certifying the border is secure. In practice that would have resulted in rubberstamping the certification based on a loose definition of "secure". You've probably heard the bogus talking point that much immigration enforcement isn't really needed since the level of illegal immigration is supposedly down. There are also bogus immigration poll and propaganda like PIIPP and crops rotting in the fields. All of that and more would be used to undercut any "tough" enforcement in the bill.

Legalizing hundreds of thousands of DREAMers would give even more power to the forces that support mass/illegal immigration. What would they do with that power? Support even more mass/illegal immigration and a further amnesty. If Trump legalizes hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, the forces listed above will immediately begin work on legalizing the millions more illegal aliens in the U.S. Obama already tried that with DAPA, his program to legalize the parents of DREAMers. Legalizing DREAMers would give the Democratic Party the power they need to make DAPA a reality, and more.

If the promised enforcement consists of Trump Wall, it could be easily weakened by a future Congress or future administration. Even if Trump Wall is 100' high and stretched all along the border, it could be undercut either by tearing parts of it down, letting parts of it fall into disrepair, building physical or metaphorical doors in the wall, or increasing legal immigration in other ways. If the promised enforcement consists of more Border Patrol agents, then amnesty supporters could easily undercut that by simply not hiring new agents in order to reduce the force. There's no other form of enforcement that couldn't be easily undercut.

In brief, trading mass legalization for enforcement would mean more legal immigration, more illegal immigration, and more amnesties.

The smart way to deal with DREAMers is to first lay the intellectual groundwork, such as by pointing out how emigration harms Mexico. And, by pointing out how the DREAM Act is anti-American. In this age of Breitbart News, making smart arguments that undercut amnesty supporters to their base is ignored. However, that's key. Simply calling the establishment media names doesn't cut it. They have to be shown wrong. Otherwise, their talking points will continue to be believed by tens of millions and they'll continue to get away with it. Simply making arguments that only play at Breitbart won't do that.

Smart arguments can't be torn down by the next Congress or the next president.

After setting that intellectual groundwork, help DREAMers return home, even if that means paying them money (in a very tightly controlled fashion). That avoids giving an amnesty that leads to future amnesty, and it will help both the USA and Mexico.

Want to help out? When you see someone pushing the sucker bet of enforcement for amnesty, use this post to undercut them to their supporters.