Will Trump Cave to Open Borders Asylum Policy of GOP House?
We hired Donald Trump to drain the Swamp. Alas, too many Republicans are working for the alligators. Take the case of Kansas congressman Kevin Yoder. If you’re wondering why through eight long years of President George W. Bush, and a bruising primary contest which centered on immigration, and two years of Trump as president, gangs like MS-13 still control our border … look no further than men like Yoder. He holds funding for the Wall hostage to restoring a reckless asylum policy.
If you wonder why the President can’t build a Wall, but instead keeps stumbling into public relations disasters like the “immigrant families” debacle. … Thank Yoder, and his clones.
An Invitation to Half the World to Claim Asylum
As chairman of a key House committee, this Republican led the drive to overturn a key immigration policy. As the Washington Post reports:
A GOP-led House committee delivered a rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration policies this week — an unusual bipartisan move that may ultimately spell trouble for must-pass spending measures later this year.
The powerful House Appropriations Committee passed a measure that would essentially reverse Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s guidance earlier this year that immigrants will not generally be allowed to use claims of domestic or gang violence to qualify for asylum. The provision was adopted as part of a larger spending bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, an already contentious measure because of disputes over funding for President Trump’s border wall. …
Want to know what’s extra sleazy? The open-borders provision (HR 392) passed on a voice vote. So RINOs in the pocket of the cheap labor lobby can report back to their donors, without facing their voters.
Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions knew that the Obama administration had perverted international law. It redefined the meaning of the word “asylum.” Worldwide, that means protection from government persecution. Period. Instead, Obama’s people decided it should apply to anyone coming from anywhere who feared abuse. At the hands of local gangs. Or abusive spouses (perhaps those who follow the Quran, which allows wife-beating). No matter how many “safe countries” that person had passed through.
A good thing that Rep. Yoder’s mother wasn’t a drug-dealer.
Does that sound to you like an open invitation to move to the U.S. to every human being living in most of Latin America, and every woman or gay man living in the Muslim world? No surprise then that we have a border crisis. Or that an attorney general who campaigned for Donald Trump would seek to overturn it.
147 Million Already Eying Our Borders
But you might feel betrayed, disgusted, and outraged that a Republican Congress would gut it. According to the Gallup Poll: “Nearly 710 million adults worldwide want to migrate to another country and 147 million of those specifically want to come to the United States.”
How many of those people come from countries with gang violence? Domestic abuse problems? Of course, we have those here. No need to import still more. To quote Jack Nicholson’s classic line in As Good As It Gets: “Go sell Crazy somewhere else. We’re ALL STOCKED UP HERE.” In fact, as Lifezette documents, many of the U.S. cities where such migrants end up prove more dangerous than the countries from which they allegedly fled.
At Least Yoder’s Mama Is Happy
But asylum-seekers won’t really need to prove their claims. All an illegal immigrant will need to do is make one. Then it’s essentially the U.S. government’s job to prove him wrong. Meanwhile, if he brought along a child he claims as his own, after three weeks the U.S. government has to let them go. Never likely to show up at a hearing again.
And why did Yoder gut Sessions’ reforms? Because of his mama. No, seriously. Here’s what he told Congress: “As a son of a social worker, I have great compassion for those victims of domestic violence anywhere, especially as it concerns those nations that turn a blind eye to crimes of domestic violence.”
A good thing that Yoder’s mother wasn’t a drug-dealer. Then he’d be holding DHS funding hostage to legalizing crystal meth.
Asylum-seekers won’t really need to prove their claims. All an illegal immigrant will need to do is make one. Then it’s essentially the U.S. government’s job to prove him wrong. Meanwhile, if he brought along a child he claims as his own, after three weeks the U.S. government has to let them go. Never likely to show up at a hearing again.
This isn’t what we voted for. And if the President doesn’t fix it, millions of conservatives will find something else to do on November 6 instead of voting. Then he’ll get impeached. And he will deserve it. But America deserves better.
John Zmirak is co-author, with Al Perrotta, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.
