Green Cards for DACA Illegal Aliens Could Trigger Chain Migration of 4M Foreign Nationals
A proposal to give green cards — and thus eventual United States citizenship — to at least 700,000 illegal aliens could trigger a “chain migration” of more than four million foreign nationals arriving in the country.
As Breitbart News reported, White House adviser Jared Kushner and a handful of Republican Senators have reportedly floated the idea to secure a fifth of border wall funding by giving green cards to the roughly 700,000 illegal aliens enrolled in President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The amnesty proposal would allow all DACA-enrolled illegal aliens to start the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen after five years, a reward that allows them to eventually bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the country through the process known as “chain migration.”
Chain migration makes up more than 70 percent of all legal immigration to the country, importing nearly eight million foreign nationals since 2007. Five years of chain migration adds more people to the U.S. population than yearly American births.
Mexican nationals make up about 80 percent of the DACA illegal population, while Central American nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras make up an additional roughly ten percent.
According to Princeton University researchers Stacie Carr and Marta Tienda, the average number of family members brought to the U.S. by newly naturalized Mexican immigrants stands at roughly six.
Therefore, should all 700,000 DACA illegal aliens each bring three to six foreign relatives to the country after being naturalized, this constitutes a never-ending chain migration flow of anywhere from 2.2 million to 4.2 million foreign nationals arriving in the U.S. over the next few decades.
This is a foreign-born population — solely triggered from a DACA amnesty — that has the potential to exceed the populations of Oklahoma, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, and Maine. If the chain migration flow from such a plan reached four million, it would be seven times the population of Wyoming.
Those two to four million chain migrants would also be allowed to bring in their foreign relatives once they become naturalized citizens.
As Breitbart News reported, if chain migration is not ended — as President Trump has demanded — the U.S. electorate will forever be changed, with between seven to eight million new foreign-born individuals being eligible to vote because of chain migration, and overall an additional 15 million new foreign-born voters.
Every year the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals, with the vast majority deriving from family-based chain migration, whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreign relatives to the U.S. In 2016, the legal and illegal immigrant population reached a record high of 44.5 million. By 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that the legal and illegal immigrant population of the U.S. will make up nearly 15 percent of the entire U.S. population.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.