“So, if we have people who were brought here ‘through no fault of their own,’ are amazingly smart and industrious, and all serve in the military and kill Al Qaeda terrorists with their bare hands, should they be deported?”

“No? Great! Now it’s time for completely open borders.”

That essentially describes the attitude of the political class at this point.

It’s one thing to put out BS polling as a propaganda tool; it’s quite another to actually believe it yourself and implement political strategy accordingly. That is the mistake Democrats have made by obsessing over superficial polling suggesting that Americans, including conservative Republicans, are clamoring for amnesty.

The reality of the polling tells quite a different story.

The immigration polling dynamic is very similar to the dynamic of the gun issue. Democrats have touted polls showing support for expanded background checks as high as 90 percent. “Do you want criminals to get guns or not?” a pollster would ask.

But even honest Democrat strategists will admit that the reality of the gun issue is just the opposite — the issue as a whole, especially when you weigh the intensity of the sides, is a major loser for Democrats. In general, people want more pro-gun legislation, not less. Just ask Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

The same dynamic applies to immigration. Isolating a largely abstract and mythical population of illegals and encapsulating it into a poll doesn’t reflect where people’s hearts and priorities are on this issue. But the answers to very straightforward polling questions of whether we have too much or too little immigration, whether immigrants should assimilate, whether immigrants should get welfare, whether immigrants should learn English, and whether immigration should be merit-based as opposed to family-based, are indeed very reflective of where the national mood is on immigration. And deep down, Democrats know this.

A very thorough and comprehensive poll from Harvard-Harris shows that Americans want a dramatic cut in legal immigration and a transition to merit-based immigration. Here is a list of some of the questions and results:

Question: “Do you think immigration priority for those coming to the U.S. should be based on a person’s ability to contribute to America as measured by their education and skills or based on a person having relatives in the U.S.?”

Results: The merit side won by a margin of 79 percent to 21 percent. Support for merit-based priorities was 72 percent among Hispanics and 85 percent among blacks. Seventy-two percent of self-described Democrats and 65 percent of self-described liberals agreed. Yet you will never see news stories or even Republican politicians touting the fact that even liberal Democrats support merit-based over chain migration.

Question: In your opinion, about how many legal immigrants should be admitted to the U.S. each year?

This is as non-leading and non-push-polling as a polling question can get. No preconceived notions of “no fault of their own” or “brought to America by parents.” This is a straight-up question of numbers. Only 19 percent chose options ranging from 1 million to over 1 million. Our official level of immigration every year is about 1.1 million, but between other de facto permanent programs, as many as 1.8 million immigrants were likely admitted in 2016. The American people clearly reject it and would never support it if the numbers were advertised. Eighteen percent chose the 500,000-1 million option, 19 percent chose 250,000-499,999, and 35 percent (including 48 percent of blacks) – by far the largest share – chose 100,000-250,000.

This means that a clear majority want less than half the current intake, if not one third of the current intake, a result that would not even be achieved through passage of the RAISE Act. In total, 81 percent desire less immigration than our average recent intake, and less than 12 percent want the level of immigration from our most recent year. That is not much more than the 9 percent on the other extreme who said they want absolutely no immigration whatsoever.

Talk about the silent majority! Most of the numbers were pretty uniform across all demographics, too.

Other findings of the poll: 61 percent feel that border security is inadequate; 68 percent (including 62 percent of Democrats) oppose the diversity visa lottery; and only 22 percent want open-border policies.

Yet the media will just latch onto the one question about giving work permits or a path to citizenship to “those brought here by their parents,” to which 78 percent answered in the affirmative. The problem with this question is that it gives no context as to who these people are, which priorities should come first, and whether they should get welfare.

What if voters were told that most people in this group have only a high school diploma, don’t know English very well (unlike the ones the media puts on camera), and would likely be on welfare and rely heavily on refundable tax credits?

What if voters were told that young illegal immigrants were even more likely to commit crimes, particularly gruesome ones, than older ones and that in Arizona they were 884 times more likely to be convicted of a crime?

What if they were told that 535 DACA recipients who were ordered deported for serious crimes are still roaming our communities and that this is not even a discussion in the negotiations?

What if they were told that DACA is what spawned the Central American wave of border crossings, as confirmed by the El Paso Intelligence Center, the Congressional Research Service, the Washington Post, and the Migration Policy Institute, that the new promise to ratify DACA is rejuvenating the border surge, and that up to 30 percent of unaccompanied minors (or purported minors) detained by immigration authorities as a result of DACA have ties to MS-13 gangs?

What if voters were asked whether we should grant amnesty before fixing immigration and security for Americans and risk more illegal immigration or if we should first prioritize security and legal reforms?

What if they were told that as soon as these people have children, they will immediately be eligible for welfare and already get refundable tax credits?

Clearly, the electorate is a lot more outraged at our stolen sovereignty and at America becoming a dumping ground for the world’s criminals than they are about the urgency for a limited amnesty for the “best and the brightest.”

So what does this all mean?

If Republicans would embrace sovereignty and security and run on lowering immigration, making it merit-based, deporting all criminal aliens, ending welfare for immigrants, and stopping automatic citizenship for future children of illegal aliens, they would be leading this election season in a heartbeat. And even if one believes there is a clamor and intensity for amnesty, the Goodlatte bill incorporates both elements – so they can have their cake and eat it too.

When will Republicans stop listening to their phony consultants, who have done them a disservice on this issue for decades? Common sense is the best poll of all. (For more from the author of “Poll: Majority of Voters Want Less Than Half Our Current Immigration” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Do immigration restrictions violate American tradition and sovereignty?

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced his support for a new immigration bill reintroduced by Senators Tom Cotton, R-Ark. and David Perdue, R-Ga., that will reorient our policy toward a more skills- and merit-based system.

The RAISE Act would reduce low-skilled immigration; cut back on the historically high influx of immigrants by half in a decade’s time; end the diversity lottery and chain migration; and prioritize those seeking green cards for employment. The bill would also ask basic questions of green-card applicants, regarding one’s skillset, prospects for self-sufficiency, and proficiency in English.

“This would be the most significant reform to the immigration system in half a century. It is a historic and very vital proposal,” President Trump said Wednesday, in announcing the bill.

The Left, naturally, is apoplectic that the Trump administration would dare to impose limits on immigration. A particular point of contention is the language requirement. CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta confronted Trump aide Stephen Miller regarding the RAISE Act, asserting that the administration’s proposal would violate American tradition.

“What you’re proposing, or what the president is proposing here does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration,” Acosta said. Quoting the Statue of Liberty-attached poem, Acosta asked if the administration is “trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them you have to speak English.”

“You’re saying that [the Statue of Liberty] does not represent what the country has always thought of as immigration coming into this country? Stephen, I’m sorry, but that sounds like some National Park revisionism,” Acosta said.

He’s dead wrong. There is nothing in the American founding, history, or tradition that states certain immigration criteria are inhumane and/or unjust.

The social compact theory of the American founding is based on the fundamental principle of consent. All men are created equal. Just government, then, is only that government which men consent to be governed by.

Adding a new member to the social compact requires the consent of those already admitted. James Madison makes this point in an essay titled “Sovereignty,” “[I]n the case of naturalization a new member is added to the Social compact, not only without a unanimous consent of the members but by a majority of the governing body deriving its just powers from a majority of the individual parties to the social compact.”

As scholar Thomas G. West explains in his book, “The Political Theory of the American Founding,” in the American tradition there is no recognition of an unconditional right to immigrate to the United States (or anywhere else). The Pennsylvania Bill of Rights, which West cites, codifies the “natural inherent right to emigrate,” or leave society, but acknowledges conditions on entering society.

“[P]eople have a right to become a citizen of another country only when, as Pennsylvania states, there is ‘another [country] that will receive them.’ In other words, although there is a natural right to reject your current society, there is no natural right to become a citizen of a society that refuses to accept you. Since ‘citizenship is the effect of compact,’ there can be no right to immigrate unless there is consent on both sides: the would-be immigrants and the country ‘that will receive them,’” West writes.

Placing conditions and qualifications on immigrants, like the English language requirement, is consistent with both the Founding Founders’ thinking and the American tradition. Dr. West quotes scholar Rogers Smith, who once stated that limiting immigration is “quite obviously illiberal, inconsistent with the ideals of liberty and equality professed in … the nation’s ‘Creed.’”

“On the contrary,” West explains, “Gouverneur Morris observed at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that ‘every society from a great nation down to a club had the right of decaling the conditions on which new members should be admitted.’”

The “governing body” James Madison refers to is Congress, which derives its power to regulate immigration from the Constitution — as Founding Father Roger Sherman explained during the debate over the Naturalization Act of 1790: “[I]t was intended by the Convention, who framed the Constitution, that Congress should have the power of naturalization, in order to prevent particular States receiving citizens, and forcing them upon others who would not have received them in any other manner.”

The consensus view of American tradition and heritage is that the people’s representatives in Congress have the both the constitutional power and the duty to determine immigration-policy criteria. Our republic is a social compact — based on consent of the sovereign American people.

There is no natural right to unlimited entry into America. The debate we are currently having, and ought to have, is “Who ought to be restricted — and how so?”

America’s body politic elected a president and a congressional majority that centered their message on re-prioritizing border security and cracking down on illegal immigration. The debate on the prudence of tighter immigration policy is a discussion that ought to be had without blowhards like Mr. Acosta expressing the sentiments of a poem as policy, and accusing the administration of racism. (For more from the author of “What Would the Founders Say About the GOP’s Immigration Bill?” please click HERE)

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Last month, when the Supreme Court allowed the president to follow immigration statutes regarding his temporary moratorium on refugees, I warned that the lower courts would continue their assault on our sovereignty.

Indeed, within days, the same Hawaii judge (District Judge Watson) who violated our sovereignty and was rebuked by the high court, demanded that the administration reflexively and categorically admit any grandparent, cousin, niece, or nephew of a relative residing in the U.S. (whether a citizen or alien). He also demanded that all refugees currently working with resettlement organizations be admitted to the U.S.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court once again ruled against the lower-court judge in part, but continues to open the door for an endless flow of migrants, stealing the sovereignty of the elected branches of government.

In late June, all SCOTUS justices ruled that the Trump travel ban can resume pending the outcome on the merits of the case. But a six-justice majority ordered the administration to temporarily admit all those with a “bona fide relationship” with U.S. relatives or institutions.

Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch dissented and indicated that he would have tossed out the entire injunction because, as any constitutionalist knows, the president and Congress decide who comes into this country, not the courts. Further, Thomas warned that the same lower-court judges would slowly chip away at the order and litigate everyone into admission.

Judge Watson in Hawaii proved the point of Justice Thomas by flip-flopping on his own previous writing and demanding that all extended family of relatives in the U.S. be admitted. He also crowned private (taxpayer-funded) resettlement contractors king over our sovereignty by allowing them to continue resettling more refugees against the national will and the president’s order pursuant to statute.

The administration immediately appealed to the Supreme Court and Wednesday they agreed to lift the latest preliminary injunction from Judge Watson and allow the president to enforce the moratorium against extended relatives.

However, the high court only agreed to stay Watson’s injunction on the refugee policy, but allowed the ruling on extended relatives to remain in place pending the resolution of the … Ninth Circuit! Which means, that when the Ninth Circuit invariably rules with Judge Watson, we will be back in the same place.

Here’s the catch: Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch indicated that they would have stayed Judge Watson’s injunction entirely, allowing the president to determine which relatives he chooses to admit. Notice the growing pattern? Justice Roberts continues to join the Left on numerous immigration issues and is clearly indicating that he believes the courts have a substantial role in controlling immigration policy, albeit not as much as some of the far-left judges think.

Some legal apologists for the judicial institution might suggest that Roberts is merely being judicious in allowing the appeals process to continue without heavy-handed intervention from the Supreme Court. But putting aside the fact that Roberts has signed onto a number of other terrible immigration opinions this term (Maslenjak v. US, Lee v. U.S, Sessions v. Morales-Santana, to name a few), his “passive” approach in this case is dead wrong.

If we are to believe, as we are essentially taught, that the Supreme Court rules over the other branches of government (and even God and natural law), then they are surely supreme over the lower courts within the same department of government.

When lower courts step so far out of bounds and take over an area of law that settled court decisions have made clear is solely within the province of congressional statute, the high-court justices have an obligation to step in quash them immediately.

Somehow, the high court seems all too alacritous to step in to stay the few lower-court decisions with conservative outcomes (many Fifth Circuit decisions on abortion), yet somehow they are always passive even when, by their own admission, lower courts have jumped off the left cliff.

As I’ve warned before, given that the lower courts are going to chip away at this order, Trump should utilize the partial SCOTUS victory to expand the moratorium both in terms of duration and the number of countries it affects.

The order should cover all countries with a significant presence of terror outlets. Furthermore, with appropriation season in full swing, the administration should demand that Republicans prohibit funding for the issuance of any visa from those countries and for the refugee resettlement program. This will preempt the courts and stop them in their tracks.

Finally, we must recognize that, aside from the travel ban, the lower courts are blocking almost every deportation of criminal aliens. Unless something is done to systemically kick the courts out of the immigration issue once and for all, we are no longer a sovereign nation. And no, we have not won back the courts — there is still a clear 6-3 liberal majority on so many issues that matter. Even if Anthony Kennedy retires next year, we already know who will be the new “Kennedy vote.” (For more from the author of “Confirmed: Justice Roberts Is a Leftist When It Counts the Most” please click HERE)

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