Exclusive—Rep. Dave Brat on DACA: I Don’t Think Dems Want to Shut Down the Gov’t ‘In Exchange for Giving Illegals Citizenship’

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that that Republican leadership will push for a clean Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government until March without Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty attached.

Brat added that Speaker Paul Ryan promised rank-and-file Republicans that any potential DACA deal would be addressed in a standalone bill.

Congressman Brat explained, “I do not think so this time, this CR will probably push us to March, that will put more pressure on the DACA deal towards March. Speaker Ryan has promised a standalone bill in the conference, and he also promised that we will have a majority of votes on that and the budget and to his credit, we have had 218 votes on the CRs.”

The Virginia conservative continued, explaining that Republicans need to pursue pro-American immigration policies such as funding the southern border wall, ending the diversity lottery, as well as eliminating chain migration. Brat said that regarding the spending bill, “They will be negotiating until the end,” and that the spending bill to continue funding government will remain obfuscated until the last minute.

Brat explained, “It comes down to leverage. Hopefully, our side says, ‘Look we won the House, the Senate, and the White House, based on not doing a DACA deal.’ It’s not in the Republican platform. What’s in the platform is balancing the budget, building a strong defense, having strong borders, having legal hiring through E-Verify, controlling chain migration, so that way immigration policy favors American workers. Most of it is common sense, but the special interests get in the way. In the Senate, the leading voices in the immigration reform are all in the pro-amnesty direction, senator by senator; they have not been strong on the immigration issue.”

Rep. Brat said that if America were to grant amnesty to the DACA illegal aliens, there could be roughly six million new migrants coming in that could wreck the American job market.

Congressman Brat previously told Breitbart News that the 2018 DACA amnesty fight “will determine the nature of our country,” and he added that “If we fail on this, just picture Europe.”

Brat told Breitbart News about some of the Freedom Caucus’s priorities for the DACA fight. The Virginia congressman said, “Our major objective in the CR is no DACA deal attached because it’s supposed to be standalone. Second, we want to plus up the military from that bit. We have to compromise with the Democrats, but it has to be proportional, we need eight votes so we have to compromise a little and give them something they want, but you do not give them the entire leverage to use that. President Trump has leverage in the form of a veto and he can use that if he doesn’t get some wall funding, some security provisions for the border. He has also called for the end of the visa lottery program, and he asked for, more importantly, the end of the chain migration program, which blows up immigration. DACA is about 800,000 and chain migration multiplies it by three or four, so that is about three or four million plus the 1.8 million that came in illegally and legally in 2016 alone, according to that CIS [Center for Immigration Studies] report. You are actually talking about six million new people coming in one year, and the labor force is not ready to handle that. The labor force is the lowest it has been in 40 years.”

Rep. Brat also argued that the cost of granting amnesty will only further burden the American worker and the middle-class.

“Just the small DACA piece, not even the Dreamer piece costs about $30 billion. So that ties in with the budget. It is the cheap labor folks, they want the cheap labor, but they do not’ want to pay the bill for the K-12 education, that is 90 percent state and local, for two kids at 26 grand a year. Then you get individuals that are eligible for $40,000 a year in federal welfare policies, Heritage Foundation documents all that,” Brat explained. “Who’s going to pay for all of that? The emergency rooms, the health insurance – the taxpayer, that is what’s missing from the debate, who’s going to pay the tab? It is nice that everyone is very generous with other people’s money, but who ends up paying the tab? It is the middle-class and the worker.”

The Virginia Republican also argued that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have overstated their leverage in the DACA fight. Brat said, “They are exaggerating their stance, I do not think they want to be in a shutdown debate when they say, ‘We will shut down the government in exchange for giving illegals citizenship.’”