Trump Makes Strong Case For More Fencing . . .

. . . Without Offering Amnesties Or More Foreign Workers To Get It

Roy Beck

by Roy Beck: For the moment, I have to say that I was relieved when the President got through his long State of the Union section on immigration.

There had been so much talk about the possibility of a big new announcement and about the efforts of at least a few inside the White House to put together some kind of new comprehensive compromise plan, I was braced for some major backtracking. I breathed a sigh of relief when he moved on to the trade issue without offering an amnesty or asking for larger guest worker programs.

I preferred what he said in last year's SOTU address which dealt much more with the broad issues of immigration, while this year was mainly about law and order. But after the long partial government shutdown, it is understandable that he would use the occasion to try again to build public support for his assessment that the chaos on our southern border is a major problem.

Here was my statement to the national news media at the end of the speech:
"We applaud the President for not just proclaiming a "moral duty" to have an immigration system that protects the lives of Americans but also their jobs. He demonstrated that as he laid out his best case yet for more fencing in strategic areas while declining to offer to get it by trading the interests of wage-earning Americans through amnesties and new worker-importation programs.

Unlike last year, however, he did not call for ending unnecessary generalized immigration like the visa lottery and chain migration that slows down the economic momentum that is pulling so many Americans back into the workforce. And while focusing on stopping and catching illegal migrants, he failed to call for mandatory E-Verify which is necessary to cut off the jobs that are the main magnet drawing them here."The President talked a lot early in his speech about the many wonderful improvements in job opportunities for Americans. He said "an economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous, partisan investigations."

But any increase in the already-high mass immigration could also stop -- or slow down -- the jobs miracle that is occurring. It would do so by relieving employers from having to recruit people out of poverty. He noted that "unemployment for American with disabilities has also reached an all-time low." He said nearly "5 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps."

I wish the President had tied immigration policy more directly to those kinds of benefits. If the Gang of Eight amnesty and immigration expansion of 2013 had passed, millions of those jobs would have gone to people from other countries instead. . . .

(Roy then provide readers with all of the President's immigration-related comments in both his 2019 and 2018 speech and comments on some of them. He also highlight sections of the speech he thinks were most significant. . . . Read More)
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Roy Beck is the Founder, President and CEO of NumbersUSA Education and Research Foundation.

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