I am told that what broke Schumer was the polling evidence over the weekend that this time the Democrats were not well supported by he American people in shutting down the government over the fate of the DACA registrants, a question that was already under bi-partisan negotiation and one in which DJT had publicly asked Congress to send him a bill to sign that contained both a solution on that issue and provisions to toughen immigration and border security standards.
It appears that the Negotiator in Chief won this round by waiting the Democrats out and that Senate Majority Leader McConnell led his side to victory.
It was clear to me from the distribution of the Democratic Party vote that the Left is seeking more than permanent legal status for present DACA registrants. IMO they are seeking a general further relaxation of immigration law and continuation of visa lotteries, chain migration and the like in the belief that for them, the more immigrants from poor countries, the better since they believe that in eventual future amnesties such people will gain citizenship and will vote Democratic. pl
I’m not so sure. CHIP is no longer in play and the Senate is relearning how to legislate without paying much attention to the White House. Perhaps the middle is starting to re-form. Time will tell…
McConnell agreed to a debate and a floor vote on DACA.
No guarantee that the vote will pass, much less the House passing it or Trump signing it.
And yes, Colonel, you’re 100% correct about the Democrats goals.
They’re quite willing to turn America into a third world toilet to gain an electoral advantage, willfully ignoring that open borders also means drugs and terrorists.
It was a cruel and disgraceful move on their part to attach CHIP to other bills. Finally, something both sides can agree on.
The analysis is spot on.
There are 11 million undocumented (illegal) aliens in the USA of which 800 thousand are DACA registrants and another 1.2 million plus eligible DACA registrants. So bringing on the Dreamers as citizens will not be cheap or timely. The Dreamer story of individuals being brought here at less than 16 years of age is one that most Americans can emphasize with as it tears to the heart of who we are as Americans.
Reality is, we do not want this to happen again so what to do.
Bring the Dreamers in as citizens in stages, the non registrants though eligible in later stages. Tie the legislation together with how do we stop this from happening again. Drop the immigration lotteries, beef up Border protection, build the wall, create realistic legal immigration policies then figure out what we will be dong with the other 9 million illegals living in this country.
Anything less is a no go and reason to call your legislator and hold their feet to the fire. As for the Democrats you have a long ways to go.
Was Graham a stalking horse or is he as well damaged goods?
Sir
I tend to agree with you that “Schumer lost bigly..”. Trump’s frame that the Democrats shut the government down because they want to support illegal immigrants and not our combat soldiers was getting a lot of traction in middle America. The Democrats couldn’t handle the political perceptions that Trump’s frame created.
I spent a bit of my reading time this past weekend reviewing material that Patrick Armstrong and blue peacock have provided regarding the Obama administration conspiracy to use the powers of our law enforcement and national security apparatus for partisan purposes. IMO, the media has intentionally not given this story any prominence. Additionally they are trying very hard to obfuscate the evidence being uncovered. I believe by later this summer this story will become a raging fire as the testimony of many of those who played an active role will become available. There is even evidence that Obama knew about Hillary’s private server and that Hillary communicated with him using this server in an unsecure manner. This is shaping up to be a major conflagration that could consume the Democrats.
Laura,
I agree with your point about the middle starting to reform. It may not last, but Trump’s reneging on the public deal he voiced with Schumer and the antics of Stephan Miller pretty much pushed the Whitehouse out of the picture.
‘chain migration’ is more accurately construed as ‘nepotistic migration’, since whole streams of immigrants are being inducted purely though links of kinship rather than merit.
TTG
The deal that Graham and Durbin brought to the WH was not the deal that Trump had been led to expect. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/22/graham-durbin-immigration-white-house-357359 In regard to the Schumer meeting on Friday there seems to be no agreement as to what was “agreed” to. pl
HCG
Graham is a monument to the toleration of South Carolina for eccentrics. pl
How do you decide whom to believe on this? I really can’t figure it out because why would Durbin and Graham lie about what they were coming to talk about…it wasn’t a fait accompli or even an actual numbered bill? And, if Trump wanted it changed, why wasn’t the discussion about how to do that and still keep it bipartisan? Trump may be a “dealer” but he isn’t a legislative deal-maker or horse trader.
I just don’t see Durbin and Graham “setting up” Trump — it is no advantage to them to have him blow up and shut off negotiations. Most legislators from city council on up just want to come to a consensus, get the vote, and go home for the evening…
Lemur,
And most of them are from countries that will, upon gaining citizenship, immidiately make them elegeable for preferential treatment as protected class minorities under our affirmative action laws. That of course can’t get discussed.
I have a different view. The Democrats controlled the House, Senate and Whitehouse between 2008-10. Did DACA pass then? No. Did the Democrats shut down the government over it? Of course not. Why?
The obvious answer is they didn’t care about it. They still don’t. The claim they want DACA to pass so they can pick up DACA recipients is a joke. The Democrats are using DACA as a pretext to attack Trump. If it wasn’t DACA, which polls at 70%, it would be something else.
BTW, DACA does next to nothing to fix our undocumented worker problem. It does nothing to provide a path to citizenship for 90% of the undocumented. We should provide all undocumented a path to citizenship.
However, having a large labor pool of people who are paid low wages and work in substandard conditions is great for the people who own this country. Not only is it easy to take advantage of those workers, but they also depress wages and working conditions for the rest of us. Additionally, they are easy for demagogs to scapegoat.
If this country really wanted to end illegal immigration all it would need to do would be make it a felony to hire an undocumented worker and, for each undocumented worker hired, the culprit would serve a mandatory one year in prison. If a corporation does the hiring, the president of the corporation serves the sentence. We don’t really have an illegal immigration problem. Instead we have a hiring of undocumented workers problem. Harsher punishment of employers would end illegal immigration in a week.
BUT THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN because the people who own this country won’t allow it. Instead, we will waste billions on walls so government contractors can get rich. As if people outside those wall don’t know about ladders or tunnels. What a joke.
I think this was a push; CHIP is now off the table, and if the REPs don’t come around on DACA in Feb. they won’t have anything to use as a hostage.
Very impressive deal – goes all the way to Feb 8th. Long live continuing resolutions, the little game of Capitol Hill.
One of the levels on which Schumer lost is cojones. As the Republicans have proved, there is value in continuing to stand, regardless of the specifics. Schumer wilted because “polls”. I sense a longing within the Democratic base for vertebrate leadership.
Huntly
DACA is a good enough hostage. pl
Bobo,
(reply to comment 4),
As you say, slow and regulated legal status for the Dreamers seems the humanitarian thing to do, since many of them were sneaked in as minor to very minor children by older parents or relatives who know the law and knew the risks.
So how to make sure it doesn’t happen again with another round of illegal immigrants bringing their unwitting pawn children? I don’t know if one could make sure of it if we permit this round of dreamers to stay, but we could at least demonstrate that a social and emotional price will be paid.
And this will be the price: every single adult-at-the-time-of-entry relative that any Dreamer who gets legalised has . . . will be deported and will be forbidden from entering the US ever again for any reason. All the adult relatives of permitted Dreamers will be declared Personae Non Grata. No member of their extended families who reMAINED in their country of origin will be permitted to enter the US for any reason. Ever. Every member of their extended families will be declared Personae Non Grata. This barrier should be maintained for 50 years or a hundred years or however long it takes for the people living in every Dreamer’s country of origin will know that the Dreamers and all their families have paid a price and will continue to pay the price that keeps on paying.
As to the left, the Clintobamacrat culture left all thought shutting the government down over DACA was the thing to do. Some relict commentators from the old political-economy left cautioned the DemParty that “DACA” was not the hill to die on for impressing the American electorate for the next election. (However they may have felt personally about the issue).
Laura
Your description of politicians as bovine, placid characters who want nothing more than quiet and a good dinner seems to me to be more a description of Hobbits in the Shire than any politicians I have known from city to national. pl
By all means, lets grant a “path to citizenship,” otherwise known as amnesty, to the DACA class, and let’s make it clear that it is a one time deal and will not be repeated, so people not yet in this country should not come here illegally in the assumption that they will eventually be granted amnesty because, to repeat, this is a one time deal and will not be repeated.
Oh wait, we already did that in 1986, granting amnesty to some four million illegal immigrants and warning future illegal immigrants not to come here on the assumption of another amnesty because this will never be repeated. Except we now want to do it again 25 years later, but this time for ten or twelve million illegal immigrants.
And, bye the way, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 did make it illegal to employ persons not in this country legally, and created the Form I-9 to verify legal status.
Nothing would crash the TX economy faster than ICE raids on Lennar or Pulte Homes corporate offices and construction sites.
Bobo,
“Drop the immigration lotteries, beef up Border protection, build the wall, create realistic legal immigration policies ” … all that is nice, and sensible basically. But still, there are things to be solved to do all that.
It starts with money and having money.
As with the wall, Trump is demanding that Mexico will pay for it – great deal done, and by demand alone, without hassling negotiations! And perhaps re-twittered.
That sounds awesome and is, in its own way, awesome, but doesn’t work. Mexico won’t pay for this toy idea of Donald Trump, they don’t have the money and no interest to pay for and to build a wall to lock themselves off America or to make Don happy.
All these things, not just the wall, will have to be paid for and they won’t happen without money, as the recent shutdown drama illustrates.
And yet, Donald before christmas, as a present probably, has lawed a tax reduction (iirc the only law he signed in his first year in office, playing golf a lot costs time apparently …) that will reduce money flowing into the budgets. All that with the assertion that, as if Don was pissing from his Trump tower, “the benevolence will trickle down to the voter”.
Well, it likely won’t, and then, it will reduce money in the budgets. What that’ll lead to is that Trump will have an excuse to gut things like … the EPA (an organisation that they hate anyway) “to save money”. Iirc the man who, thanks to Trump, lords over the EPA is famous for having called to abolish it for years. Call it ‘reformation by destruction’.
Will America be made safer, more prosper and richer? No way. It makes no sense, won’t work, but for a second it feels good.
It’s as with Trump’s ‘making America great again’. I read yesterday that security folks that keep him safe are ‘making America great again’ wearing uniforms made in other countries … because they are cheaper
than … say … Marvel costumes. The compromises that have to be made even with the grandest grand plans start early.Sir;
I had to laugh. Your comment immediately bought to mind the former Representative from South Carolina, Preston S Brooks and the ‘caning’ incident of 1856. Eccentric indeed. Tolerant, well….. (He resigned, and was promptly re-elected.)
ambrit
If you provide a path to 9 million, what are you going to do with the other 18 million who are going to come get their citizenship?
People that came illegally should not be rewarded for breaking the law.
I’m an immigrant, but came here legally.
Cynical as hell. Chuckie gets to have his TV drama about the heartless GOP trying to exit good, even great people who got dragged over the border. He is loathsome.
As for Mexico paying for the wall.
Charge a toll to enter the US from Mexico.
Colonel, you may be right about Democrats having some sort of “strategic vision” regarding future political support from “infiltrators”, but at the same time you may be giving them too much credit by imputing to them that degree of coherence!
Another part of the picture may be simply the virtue signalling and grovelling at the feet of groups they see as oppressed. This is part and parcel of what I see in Charlottesville neighborhoods with the yard signs announcing welcome to all comers…
We the people bear some responsibilty for the immigation mess because over the last 40 or so years during which the immigation pile up steadily accelerated, we have been putting in office the politicians whose misfeasance and malfeasance created the mess and perpetuate the mess. Some of them are there from the beginning, or almost from the beginning.
There are not going to be any mass transborder deportations, nevertheless, because the 24/7 all screen/all the time news cycle will not allow of it; plus loading up the buses sans windows with DACAs is morally repugnant. Somehow that lump is going to have to be digested; or given sufficient incentives to leave voluntarily; or given disincentives for staying.
Going forward, the borders have to be contained, welfare cushions have to be virtually eliminated, the country quota system has to be dramatically revised, and the immigration laws already on the books have to be firmly enforced against the illegal alien, the employers, the coyote gangs, the enabling countries, the sanctuary politicians, the whole shooting match.
I was around Federal Law Enforcement during a quaint period when the immigration laws were actually enforced and the houses around North Jersey were being painted by American citizens who were earning a middle class income to support their families.
Jose: Me too.
The repeated amnesties just encourage rational immigrants to enter the country illegally and stay.
I would help the children but permanently bar the parents from a path to citizenship. They should not be rewarded for line-jumping.
SmoothieX12
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Jack,
Regarding your comment about the use of the law enforcement and national security apparatus for partisan purposes, it is indeed a very serious matter and you can tell that every effort is being made (and will continue to be made) to keep a lid on it and to prevent the public and taxpayers, who pay for those departments, from knowing.
Yesterday, U.S. Representative Jack Ratcliffe (Repub. Texas) sent out a message that after he read some of the text messages among FBI employees, he saw: “The thousands of texts @TGowdySC and I reviewed today revealed manifest bias among top FBI officials against @realDonaldTrump. The texts between Strzok and Page referenced a “secret society.”–
https://twitter.com/RepRatcliffe/status/955599629206335488
On 19 January 2018, Stephen E. Boyd, Assistant Attorney General, sent a letter to Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which said, in part–
“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016 to approximately May 17, 2017.
…
“Please let this office know if you have any questions regarding this production.”
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4357311/DOJ-Letter-on-Missing-FBI-Texts.pdf
Well, Mr. Boyd, your boss seems to have some questions.
Attorney General Sessions says: “The Justice Department will ‘leave no stone unturned’ to locate five months’ worth of missing text messages from an FBI agent who was removed last summer from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative team, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/sessions-says-doj-will-leave-no-stone-unturned-in-search-for-missing-texts-from-agent-removed-from-muellers-team
As a coincidence theorist, I find it interesting that the text messages disappeared on December 14, 2016 and magically began to reappear after “approximately May 17, 2017”, the date that Robert Mueller was appointed to be a “special counsel” by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein to investigate the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election–
https://www.justice.gov/sco
Almost there…
The Democrat strategy became clear in the last two years of Obama’s administration: replace whites with browns in the a “coalition of the ascendant” and turn AZ, NV, CO, TX and FL blue forever while using state power to distribute enough of them in red districts to start flipping the whole country.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/affht_pt.html#final-rule
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/07/08/obama-administration-to-unveil-major-new-rules-targeting-segregation-across-u-s/?utm_term=.cd04468814e7
Boomer shills in the GOP were pressing this nonsense “Hispanics are cultural conservatives” meme because that’s what their donors wanted them to say.
But no one counted on Trump running on immigration as the centerpiece of his campaign, and it has blown DC consensus apart.
Now a borderless, multi-cultural world of atomized populations… qui bono?
Read Culture of Critique – if you have the stones – and the rest of the picture will fall into place.
https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Critique-Evolutionary-Twentieth-Century-Intellectual/dp/0759672229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516728700&sr=8-1&keywords=culture+of+critique
Ambrit,
Honor was everything in the antebellum period.
– Eliot
Eliot & Ambrit
It is unfortunate that Sumner had such a hard head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner pl
I found myself in Poland in the late 90s wanting to overstay my tourist visa and work – either legally or illegally. The thing is, Poland (like almost every other country in the world) had exit controls at their border making the illegal option non-viable. So I got the paperwork done and worked there legally.
The only reason Canada and the US don’t have exit controls at our borders is because our governments wish to encourage people to overstay their visas and work illegally.
Flavius–
I agree we do bear responsibility…we employ them as gardeners, laborers, carpenters, health aides, elder care assistants, housekeepers, etc. We are complicit as Americans because we want it cheap…especially our food.
How much are we willing to pay for an entirely legal workforce?
perhaps they lied simply out of habit?
All I see in the link is that they were dishonest. How? Schumer agreed to the wall. Now its off the table. I think Schumer won bigly. CHIP for 6 years and a very public and nasty DACA debate.
robt,
We are now in the cover-up of the cover-up!
If any ordinary American had done something like this in a FBI investigation, the book would have been thrown at them. And they probably would have been arrested for obstruction of justice. This is a good example of the 2-tier rule of law that we have arrived at. Note that all the conspirators are still getting a paycheck from the taxpayer. In fact McCabe is being allowed to stay until March so he can collect his pension.
In any case the evidence flow right now continues to reinforce the conspiracy in the Obama administration. There is zero evidence flow in the direction of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia to steal the election.
There has clearly been an ongoing battle between the Deep State elements and Congressional investigators. They are doing everything possible including “losing” incriminating evidence and of course the stall and obfuscate tactics. Rosenstein does not have clean hands. He was in with Mueller and Comey on Uranium One.
I don’t know where this leads. Trump is clearly handcuffed as he can’t do anything that even comes close to smelling like obstruction of justice. He has to trust that Nunes, Goodlatte and Grassley will carry the ball down field. When one looks at the Bundy case where the judge threw the case out due to prosecutorial misconduct and other recent cases, it is quite clear that the FBI, DOJ and the IC are completely out of control. Will anyone be held accountable? Will these organizations be cleaned up? I am not holding my breath. Goes to show the sad state of affairs.
For a Mexican, a tourist visa to enter the US is $160. A border crossing card entitling a Mexican to cross over to US border towns only is also $160.
TimmyB — I’m not sure your obvious answer is that obvious. You do remember what else was happening 2008-2010? The recession? And, honestly, if a party must choose between using all of its political capital for economic stimulus and something else, I think choosing to provide greatly improved access to health insurance for Americans v. major immigration reform, was a decent choice. Maybe it would have been better to choose immigration but without a reliable GOP partner, I don’t see that there would have been any success.
I totally agree about employers…but we both know that isn’t going to happen. So, failing that, let’s be sure to keep the DACA kids who we, as taxpayers, have already educated! Let’s keep that reservoir of talent here because we are going to need their energy and brains.
There is no perfect solution but there are sensible choices b between various alternatives.
laura
Ever studied Economics? pl
Colonel,
I was very young when our tiny herd got mastitis. We children didn’t notice a lot. My father looked a bit thoughtful sometimes, my mother too, but it was barely a comma in the long idyllic stream of a country childhood.
Not long ago and in this different age my mother told me how it had been. She’d managed to keep us children fed, she said, but she herself had gone down to six stone. One of those things. You just got on with it. No drama, no help looked for, no welfare claimed. It had been a very quiet disaster.
I don’t think the accounts one reads of the Depression are inaccurate. For many communities, not just single families, the disaster was immeasurably worse and more prolonged. But still not that much drama.
There was some civil disorder, but little compared with what would happen in less stable countries, and little of that civil disorder truly threatening. When one looks at even worse times it’s often surprising how quietly people in the West can starve. How peaceful such disasters can be. And we always get through them somehow. Or we always have done.
We don’t know whether there’s going to be a great financial crash. Not if the Central Banks can help it so maybe it’ll be all right. What there is inevitably going to be is a downturn, as the business cycle dips at some time. It’s likely to be a noticeable downturn, at least for those at the bottom.
There will be nothing quiet about it next time. Western countries are no longer each one large community, with a few minorities dotted about here and there. We are all many communities, and that mix already given to civil disorder. And far from not claiming welfare, large numbers already survive on nothing else. Cut that and many would go short. A few might starve. Few would go short or starve quietly next time round.
That is the time bomb we’re sitting on, all of us – immigrant, immigrant descended, non-immigrant, the lot. The debate about immigration is hedged around with so many inhibitions, so many prohibitions even, that it can’t be conducted sensibly at present. But whether Left or Right, Progressive or Deplorable, if we don’t start conducting the debate sensibly history will simply roll on and we’ll be in no condition to conduct it at all. I’m glad it’s a debate your site doesn’t shy away from.
Fellow Traveler,
( reply to comment 21)
So crash it. Then once the watertight seal against illegal entry is fully in place, bring it back up with legal citizens and legal residents, working in legal conditions for legal wages and benefits.
Concerning the Democrats wanting to pass DACA to gain voters, it is better for the Democrats to do nothing but continue to make the GOP look like a bunch of racist assholes.
Even Bush the Lessor saw the inevitable future where 10 million undocumented immigrants have 30 million citizen kids who eventually turn 18 and then extract their revenge by voting against the GOP in every election until they die. That’s the Democrats’ end game. Before you laugh, that future has already happened in California, where Mexican American voters have been punishing the GOP for pushing and passing Proposition 187 in 1994. The GOP will regret its anti immigrant stance for decades.
The White House needs file a request for all of Schumers e-mails, text, and call logs ,intercepts. Need to find out who was directing Schumer in shutting down our government. A foreign government involvement?