Trump Weighs Idea of Giuliani Heading Immigration Commission; FAIR: Participants Must Represent American Interests
For the past 50 years we have not defined what national interests we seek to advance through immigration. It is the only public policy that lacks a clear goal, which is why every attempt to reform immigration policy has failed.
—Dan Stein, President of FAIR
(May 12, 2016 — Washington, D.C.) - In an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump floated the idea of creating a commission to conduct a top to bottom review of current immigration policy. After eight years in which U.S. immigration policy has been dictated by a small group of ethnic advocates and powerful business interests, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) welcomes the formation of a commission that considers the interests and ideas of the primary stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy: the American people.
“The public interest has been glaringly absent from the debate about immigration reform for far too long,” noted Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “Under the Obama administration the interests of the American people in immigration policy were not just ignored; they were actively and aggressively undermined. If and when a commission is assembled, FAIR suggests participants include a broad spectrum of law enforcement officials including elected sheriffs, ICE and Border Patrol personnel and the organizations that represent them, Americans displaced by foreign guest workers and groups that advocate on their behalf. Lastly, a commission must include immigration reform groups like FAIR that lend decades of expertise advocating on behalf of the American people.”
FAIR believes that the starting point for any effort designed to reform our nation’s immigration policies must be to define a public interest objective for immigration in the 21st century. “For the past 50 years we have not defined what national interests we seek to advance through immigration. It is the only public policy that lacks a clear goal, which is why every attempt to reform immigration policy has failed. Until we define what our goals are, reform efforts will continue to be divisive exercises in futility,” said Stein.
FAIR also cautions that creating a commission to come up with policy objectives and other recommendations should not delay the next administration from rolling back the countless executive actions taken by the Obama administration to circumvent statutory limits on immigration, grant quasi-legal status to illegal aliens, and hamstring immigration law enforcement. There are countless things the next administration can do immediately to restore integrity and credibility to an immigration enforcement system that has been decimated by an administration that has put its political agenda ahead of its responsibilities to the American people and the Constitution.