Most Republican governors endorsed by President Donald Trump during their gubernatorial campaigns are “betraying” the president’s immigration agenda said Daniel Horowitz, host of the Conservative Review podcast, offering his remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Binder.
Binder invited Horowitz’s comment on a federal judge’s blocking of Trump’s executive order allowing communities and states to stop refugee resettlement.
“A judge can’t affirmatively grant a visa,” explained Horowitz. “Even if the judge would be correct on the merits, there is no standing. Refugees can’t get standing to come here. So what do they do? They have non-profit groups — and this is unbelievable, it’s as self-censored as it gets — the nine VOLAG (Volunteer Agency) groups, these are the contractors that get taxpayer funds — $3.5 billion over ten years to transform our neighborhoods and our communities — they get standing to say, ‘Wait a minute. Well, if states can reject refugees, then there will be fewer of them admitted and resettled, and guess what? We’re going to get less revenue, so we have an actionable grievance.’”
Horowitz continued, “It’s kind of the same rationale with Planned Parenthood getting standing to sue for funding. You don’t have a right to taxpayer funding or to Governor Greg Abbott allowing you to resettle in any given county.”
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Horowitz went on, “It’s the most vivid illustration of what I call, ‘social transformation without representation.’ The key decisions in a republic have to flow directly from the people or through the people’s representatives, and there’s no greater decision that a society makes than the future orientation of that society, [who] become members, the future of their communities, their neighborhoods, and here, like you mentioned, you have all unaccountable, unelected players — the U.N., State Department bureaucrats, and private, self-centered, taxpayer-funded contractors whose executives get $400,000 salaries — [transforming] our neighborhoods with no questions about the prudence of their decisions.”
Horowitz said, “Here’s the dirty little secret that people need to know about the program where we stand in the year 2020. The reality is, there is almost no such thing as a refugee in the traditional sense. Even if you’re generally an immigration expansionist, and you want large quantities of immigrants across the board, this particular program is outdated.”
Horowitz reflected on the history of America’s refugee absorption.
“There was once a time when we had a lot of political and religious persecution, one-sided persecution,” said Horowitz, “Jews in Europe — be it at the hands of Russian tsars, later on, obviously, with the Nazis; be it the Vietnamese fleeing the communists in North Vietnam; those that fled Cuba, especially early on in the 50s from [Fidel] Castro; and certainly those that came from the former Soviet Union.”
Horowitz went on, “It was a one-sided political persecution. They shared our values. They wanted to come for American values, and obviously they were being persecuted, and it worked out very nice, and that is where a lot of the nostalgia comes from. So these [refugee resettlement] groups play off of it, but that’s not what’s happening now, because you don’t really have that anymore.”
Refugee resettlement groups have a financial interest in perpetuating and increasing the volume of refugee admissions into the United States, noted Horowitz. “Let’s say you solve the problem, well, you’re out of a job,” he said. “It’s more of a technical issue for them than some sort of an ideological reason, because they need a sense of purpose. They need to keep their jobs.”
Horowitz continued, “What they started to do was take from two-sided [conflicts] –either ancient clan civil wars in Africa, let’s say in Congo, or in Sunni-Shia civil wars in the Middle East — and the problem is, we’ve brought in about 51,000 Shia refugees from Iraq and about 37,000 Sunnis. Well, that doesn’t make sense. Who’s the persecutor and who’s the persecutee? The reality is we brought in a lot of Shias that were working with the Soleimani-led militias backed by the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), as well as on the other side of the ledger, we brought in Sunnis that had tied to Al-Qaeda in Iraq, eventually ISIS.”
Foreign conflicts are brought to America via the status quo of immigration and refugee admissions, assessed Horowitz. “Once they’re here — a lot of them, not all of them — divide along the clan line,” he stated.
Horowitz urged conservatives to focus on Republican politics, particularly on matters of immigration.
“This is where I’m really going to take it to everyone that’s not named Breitbart,” Horowitz remarks. “Nobody is focused on this. Every conservative media seems to have a hot take on the Democrat debate, ‘Oh, Bernie said this. Warren said this.’ Who gives a darn? We can’t affect that. Your audience can’t affect that. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What we should want is a coherent, cohesive, articulate principled Republican alternative to combat whatever emanates from that primary.”
Horowitz continued, “The reality is, we don’t get involved in the GOP debate. Every day there’s a GOP debate on important policies in the states, at a federal level, in the executive branch agencies, and we could have our voices heard, and they will feel the pressure. Democrats aren’t going to feel the pressure from our crowd. Republicans will. A lot of them still want to evince an image of a conservative, and I think, largely, your audience has the ability to influence that, and John [Binder] has done a great job. You’ve got Neil [Munro] there, but there are very few, and it is just stupefying to me why we focus on the things that are the least consequential, that we cannot influence. Impeachment is already cooked. The outcome was always known.”
Horowitz said, “Trump gave us a gift where we could decide a national civilization issue at a local grassroots level and yet the left is on the field — our side didn’t even know this was happening — they’re winning in counties Trump carried by 40 points, Burleigh County, North Dakota, and that is because 90 percent of the Republicans that are elected are on the other side. Trump endorsed most of these governors, almost all of them, and yet we have this generic tweet — ‘Tough on crime. Good on immigration.’ — and incidentally, they’re all terrible on crime and immigration.”
“Someone needs to get to the president and say, ‘Look, these guys are betraying what you started doing,’” determined Horowitz. “Let me just throw out some names. These guys are in-cycle. They’re up in a couple months. There are primaries. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Gary Herbert of Utah, Jim Justice of West Virginia, Eric Holcomb of Indiana, Mike Parson of Missouri. These are states, almost all of them, Trump carried by 20, 30 points. There’s no reason for this.”
Mansour asked why Republican politicians avoid immigration issues.
Horowitz replied, “Obviously, racial politics is the kryptonite of all elected Republicans, and the left has made this about race, which is quite peculiar, because what does this have to do with race? I mean, it’s a self-indictment in their motivation, because I guess they’re saying somehow this is racial. I thought this was about people who are persecuted. What does this have to do with any particular race? But I guess they’re letting the cat out of the bag that there is some sort of agenda behind that, that clearly doesn’t have anything to do with the traditional refugee model.”
Horowitz went on, “I do still think the cheap labor element of this is much stronger. They won’t talk about that, but the reality is, how many Republicans support E-Verify? There’s one governor pushing it, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and a bunch of his guys in the state legislature, Republicans, are giving him a hard time, even though he’s such a successful governor.”
Immigration reform should be a winning issue for conservatives, Horowitz estimated. “This is a matter of wages,” he stated. “It has nothing to do with race. It’s a very easy political issue. It polls very well. Why would you be scared of it? And I think the answer is all of this gets back to cheap labor. Republicans don’t really want immigration enforcement and sovereignty the way the Democrats want open borders. A lot of this is a fake fight. They don’t sound as radical and obnoxious as Democrats do about it, but when push comes to shove, they really do want it, and they’re certainly not going to fight it.”
Horowitz concluded, “This is something that I think the left cannot win on if we actually raise awareness, but I think our base, largely, is unaware of this going on.”
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