Has anyone checked to see if CNN’s Dana Bash still has a job after accurately reporting on the Trump administration’s new immigration rule?

The White House announced Monday that it was instituting an awaited rule that bars immigrants from legal permanent residency in the U.S. if they need or are likely to need welfare assistance. On Tuesday, Bash was able to calmly and precisely describe the purpose of the new rule, even while looking back at the pack of wolves sweet guests who joined her on the panel.

“The president has said he wants to move the legal immigration system to a merit-based system,” Bash said on New Day. “What he means by that is people who can come and have money, people who can come and live without needing the assistance of the U.S. government.”

Wow, a normal person might say to themselves, do we really bring in hundreds of thousands of foreigners each year needing millions of dollars in food and housing assistance courtesy of the American taxpayer?

Why yes, normal person. Yes, we do.

You could almost hear CNN viewers around the country holding their breath to see if Bash would be dragged off set by her hair for not doing the standard CNN thing when discussing any new Trump proposal, which is for the correspondent to knit their eyebrows, look solemnly at the camera and question whether America’s moral fabric can survive yet another assault.

Not to worry, though. Bianna Golodryga and John Avlon were there to show Bash how it’s done.

Golodryga said it was “absurd” to put a standard in place that says “people can’t just come and rely on our safety net.”

Avlon took a page out of his colleague Jim Acosta’s book and cited the poem on the Statue of Liberty, as though the monument were a governing text rather than a foreign import that requires tens of thousands of tax dollars each day to remain vital (just like most of our new immigrant arrivals!)

“What this new policy does,” said Avlon, “is say, [get the f--- out].”

Minor correction: What the new policy says is, if you’re an immigrant unable to contribute to American society rather than suck it dry of its resources, then GTFO.

Nothing exposes the Democratic Party’s and the national media’s position on immigration like their fire-breathing defense of any and every poor person’s right to come to the U.S.

They have no such right — unless they jump with children across the Rio Grande into Texas and claim asylum, and then yes, they have that right. (Thanks, Democrats!) Otherwise, entry into the U.S. should be the greatest privilege the Earth has ever seen.

The administration didn’t even do something fun, like announce the new rule without warning. It doesn’t take effect until mid-October, and it was first floated almost exactly a year ago. At that time, Democrats and the national media misled and lied about its purpose. Back then, the New York Times rebutted the idea of immigrants on welfare with the completely unrelated assertion that legal immigration “has led to higher, not lower, wages.”

Setting aside that other “studies” say the opposite, the new guidelines have nothing to do with wages and everything to do with immigrants who come to the U.S. and are immediately loaded up on welfare, like food assistance, Medicaid, and housing, vacuuming up resources that might otherwise go to the poor people already here.

The authors of a 2017 study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine believed more immigration to be a good thing — and yet still found that nearly 60% of noncitizen, non-naturalized, immigrant-led households used some kind of welfare from 2011-2013. That’s compared to just 42% of homes led by native-born citizens.

A 2015 study by the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates restricting immigration, found basically the same thing only looking at data for 2012. The study said that immigrant-led households consumed double the Medicaid and food assistance benefits that native ones did. Overall, 51% of immigrant-led homes used “any welfare,” compared to 30% for native homes.

Liberals will of course get ready to lie again about the administration’s new rule. Late last year, the Center for American Progress published a study claiming that immigrants soak up little, if any welfare at all!

“The truth is … that most of the people who would be denied green cards and other visas under the revised [rule] have never received any public benefits in the United States,” the organization said, waving a shiny object with its left hand. And then using its right hand, it stole your purse: “The potential future receipt of supplemental in-kind benefits … including Medicaid, [food stamps], and rental housing assistance — does not make someone a public charge under long-standing policy and practice.”

Ah-ha! So because “long-standing policy and practice” haven’t considered certain forms of welfare to be real welfare, taxpayers are supposed to ignore them and shrug as if they’re not a drain on society. But they are a drain, and every taxpayer should be mad about it.

The John Avlons and the Bianna Golodrygas are here to tell you that your money should go to an endless flow of poor people who want in to the U.S. Have a heart!

We apparently don’t already have enough of our own poor people to deal with. Is there anyone on CNN to argue on their behalf?