The GOP establishment has used progressives’ obsession over child detentions to divert media attention from the economic details of the unpopular amnesty bill which will transfer wealth from ordinary Americans to investors, critics say.

Journalists “are just completely blinded,” said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. “You could show them a [money] trail and they would not follow it because they are so intent on their own narratives.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other GOP leaders are “offering a [child-separation] fix and saying take the amnesty with it,” said Jessica Vaughan, a director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The reporters’ own zeal for amnesty fulfills their social-justice fantasies …. [and they are] completely overlooking the impact of the Ryan bill on the college-educated,” she said, adding that “it could be their kids that will be impacted.”

GOP legislators recognize the child-distraction strategy, RollCall.com reported:

Rep. Thomas Massie said GOP leaders were using the political pressure on the family separation issue to induce members to vote for the bill. “It’s not the reason to vote for this, but they definitely put it forward as a reason to vote for this,” the Kentucky Republican said, describing leadership’s message as, “Hey, this solves your political problem as well.” “Can’t you just solve that problem with a very limited, focused stand-alone bill?” Massie asked. “Probably so, and one that would pass the Senate.”

Ryan was able to deploy the strategy partly because reporters showed no interest during his weekly press conferences about the economic impacts of his legislation. The Hill.com reported Ryan’s June 20 argument:

“The administration says it wants Congress to act, and we are. Tomorrow, the House will vote on legislation to keep families together,” [House Speaker Paul Ryan] said during a press conference. “Under this bill, when people are being prosecuted for illegally crossing the border families will remain together under [Department of Homeland Security] custody throughout the length of their legal proceedings,” referring to a compromise GOP bill.

Many reporters have Tweeted about the child-detention dispute while also ignoring the scale and impact of GOP donors’ push for cheap imported labor and amnesty, or the bill’s potential for transferring more wages from young workers to wealthy older investors. In contrast, reporters were eager to cover the economic impact of the GOP’s tax bill.

US Chamber and Business Roundtable come out against family separation. "There is no other way to say it, this is not who we are and it must end now,” writes Chamber’s Donohue. — Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) June 19, 2018

Inbox: Faith & Freedom Urges End to Family Separation At Border: Congress Must Act to Protect Families and Repair “Broken and Immoral” Immigration System — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 19, 2018

Like many other media outlets, the Washington Post has barely mentioned the economic details of the two immigration bills, instead focusing on the child-separation issue and the legislative process.

In one of many articles about the family issue in the Washingon Post, the reporters admitted that “the immigration debate has now become consumed by the consequences of the Trump administration’s border policy.”

The same article spent 17 paragraphs before it described the two competing amnesty bills very briefly — even though the article was about the President’s support for the bills:

In the House, there are two rival bills. One is a compromise measure that would provide $25 billion for Trump’s long-sought border wall, offer a pathway to citizenship to young undocumented immigrants and keep migrant families together. A competing, hard-line bill by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) would not guarantee “dreamers” a path to permanent legal residency and includes controversial enforcement measures such as the mandatory use of a worker verification program.

Reporters are focussing on the children, not the money, because that is what Democrats and donors want them to focus on, said Jenks. She added:

The Democratic political estalishment is intent on open-borders to grow their majority and essentially replace Americans. My guess, more than anything, is that reporters are following blindly that narrative. If the Democrats say jump, they say ‘How high?’ Here the Democrats have said ‘Amnesty good, open-borders good, separating families – Oh horrors!’ and reporters are following that because they are beyond the point where they can look at what the [draft] law says and look at what the choices are.

Worse, the media has internalized those attitudes, Jenks said. Immigration politics have:

become a kind of ‘Social Justice Warrior’ thing for the media. It is virtue signaling. They’re elites so they don’t have the same experience with immigration as Americans do, they don’t have to compete with them for jobs and I think they see this as a way they can stand up for the [foreign] poor and downtrodden against those deplorable Americans.

This skewed perspective ensures the media has failed to notice how Ryan’s bill shifts the target of immigration from blue-collar paychecks up to white-collar salaries, to track the impact of donors on the discharge-petition push, to recognize Ryan’s support for cheap labor, to recognize why Democrats oppose it and failed to understand why big business has rejected the amnesty bill as insufficient.

Establishment journalists cannot freely pick and choose their topics and angles without the risk of losing their jobs, income, and status, Jenks said:

The establishment media has become a cult where you are not allowed to go outside a narrative, which means you are not allowed to follow the money, to get to the truth of the facts. They would face becoming outcasts if they did that … they would be ostracized. It is really amazing because a lot of the money [redirected by immigration policy] goes to the cheap=labor lobby which the Democrats purport to hate, and the media also pretends to hate. But they are really all part of the Democrats’ globalized establishment.

Establishment journalists cannot imagine life outside the establishment, said Vaughan. The nation’s immigration policy is backed by “big business, big tech, big ag[riculture], big religion, big labor … [and] big media is a willing partner,” she said.

Migration Economics

Currently, four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market — but the government provides green cards to roughly 1 million legal immigrants and temporary work-permits to roughly 3 million foreign workers.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration shifts wealth from young people towards older people by flooding the market with foreign labor. That process spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. The policy also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.