US Immigration and Border Security Thread

[Montmorency]

Senate's working group outline of deal on borders and immigration

The final deal will codify the legal protections for so-called DREAMers that Trump rescinded when he ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that began under his predecessor. The deal also seeks to undo another Trump decision: the termination of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for certain groups of immigrants, including Salvadorans, 200,000 of whom could face an end to their legal status in 2019.

In an interview Thursday afternoon, Flake confirmed those details to The Daily Beast. He said the DACA fix agreed to as part of the deal includes a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers. Additionally, they will have to wait 12 years from the time they are awarded protected status before they can gain citizenship, according to a congressional source familiar with the negotiations, and they can earn up to two years of credit for any time spent as a DACA beneficiary. Groups of immigrants such as Salvadorans would be able to access the diversity visa lottery program if they have Temporary Protected Status, according to Flake.

In exchange for backpedaling two of his initiatives, Trump would score some real policy victories. The deal will revamp but not end the visa lottery program, numerous sources said. The formula for so-called chain migration—the policy whereby lawful permanent residents can sponsor immigrants to the U.S.—was re-drawn in a way that alters the ability of those DREAMers to sponsor their relatives for legal status.

Once again, the Democrats display zero desire or ability to negotiate. We should not WANT to codify DACA. You don't hand over concessions in order to reinstate the status quo.

It is easy to suspect that it is guaranteed that even if Democrats were to regain control of both chambers and the White House in a few years, they would not use the opportunity to repeal the recent tax bill, let alone substantially raise taxes matched to new spending. (Given the timing of the bill's passage, we will have entered a cyclical downturn by that point anyway.)

Forget about single payer healthcare with this bunch. They will shore up Obamacare with a public option and call it a victory, reproducing the 2009 baseline a decade late.

The final deal will also include money for some sort of physical structure along the southern border. Just what that structure will be called and what it will resemble is still unclear. Trump has demanded funding for a wall, though he has backed off of his insistence that it be a coast-to-coast concrete barrier funded by the Mexican government. Democrats, and some Republicans, are adamantly opposed to a wall being built.

Tell him: submit your plans for review according to whatever funds you can appropriate from Mexico. No crowdfunding.

[Strike For The South]

If the administration was serious about slowing undocumented peoples they would fine buisnesses that employ them and slash AG subsidies for those growers who have them work the fields. Instead of raiding 7-11s, they would be fining the corporate HQ.

The fact of the matter us this, these stunts they are pulling, wether they be deporting Mexicans from corner stores or Haitians from their homes are merely red meat for a "working class" that they have no real answers for. They are trinkets and lead designed to hold the base together long enough so that the very rich can continue to pillage the community and the coffers.

It is absolutely unconscionable.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I find myself in total agreement with Strike on this. While I am happy with the chilling effect the Trump administration has had on illegal entry, there is no wall high enough to stop illegal immigration if there exists a market for illegals here in the USA. Unless that market is curtailed, someone will find a way to satisfy that market.

Americans like to get stoned on cocaine and want to keep their pain receptors numbed permanently after knee surgery, or hangnails, or whatever. If perc is not available, then heroin will suffice. Thus there is a market. You have all long since noted the efficacy of America's "war on drugs" to block the smuggling of drugs into the country to fill this market need.

Good gravy, we are actually having more success in our "War on Terror" than we are having with drugs and illegals.

[Montmorency]

Prior to any economic or authoritarian argument in policies dealing with unauthorized immigration broadly, decent people ought to be able to affirm that any putative harms do not permit us to act like brutes toward the bodies and persons of unauthorized immigrants, and any collateral.

Let's not fashion a police state out of our executive and a s-thole out of our country in order to deter migration, even if the "unreachable 1/3" might like the sound of stewing in that welter.

[Montmorency]

And the "shithole" moment is just exemplary of what Trump supporters love about him, so don't focus on the language, don't even focus on the discriminatory sentiment - the media needs to focus on who these people are and what they want to see in our country.

These Trump supporters are the kind of people who will absolutely agree that we need more whites and fewer "mudbloods", the kind of people who will sit there gathered with children in their presence and rant about how non-white breeding rates are threatening the racial order and that the US government should enact policies to suppress breeding by the blacks and browns and subsidize white birth rates, that America will be Great Again once it is White Again.

They genuinely believe, and have always believed, that all men are equal, but whites are the 'most' equal and to deny this is tantamount to special privilege for the uncivilized and genetically inferior darkies.

And the Republican Party has chosen to ride or die with these people, over and over for decades. They have cultivated these attitudes in fungal squalor.

And the Democrats chose to assimilate to this party in the hope of winning a few votes?

Remember the minor scandal of Melania Trump plagiarizing Michelle Obama's convention speech in 2016? Was the problem the plagiarism, or the fact that Michelle Obama gave a Republican-safe speech at the DNC in 2008? And this is the person some liberals want to run in 2020, merely because of her proximity to Barack and her not being a dunce.

Wheres the 'middle finger' emoticon? We need a few of those.

[spmetla]

And the "shithole" moment is just exemplary of what Trump supporters love about him, so don't focus on the language, don't even focus on the discriminatory sentiment - the media needs to focus on who these people are and what they want to see in our country.

They probably whole heatedly agree and will side with him over the political correctness every sane politician practices. They are against any America that is "Globalist" which seems to be anti caring about any other country or even how those countries persevere us because we are the greatest.

These Trump supporters are the kind of people who will absolutely agree that we need more whites and fewer "mudbloods", the kind of people who will sit there gathered with children in their presence and rant about how non-white breeding rates are threatening the racial order and that the US government should enact policies to suppress breeding by the blacks and browns and subsidize white birth rates, that America will be Great Again once it is White Again.

Sadly that's the line of the other end of the spectrum. One side is for totally open borders, the other for promotion of whites and white immigration.

Makes it very difficult for people such as myself that want merit or skills based immigration. Having Somali slums appear in Minnesota and Michigan from accepting too many refugees isn't acceptable but neither is not accepting any Somalis just because they are black or Muslim. If we accept people from all over that fill job vacancies that American workers aren't filling (we have many tradesman vacancies but a glut of college educated workers) we would be benefiting a lot as a nation. This would also speed up integration for said immigrants because opportunity and prosperity have always been the best tools for upward mobility and social acceptance for "new" Americans.

The fact of the matter us this, these stunts they are pulling, wether they be deporting Mexicans from corner stores or Haitians from their homes are merely red meat for a "working class" that they have no real answers for. They are trinkets and lead designed to hold the base together long enough so that the very rich can continue to pillage the community and the coffers.

The stunts and rhetoric have already negatively affected the kona coffee business here in Hawaii. The mass exodus of mexicans has created a labor shortage for coffee picking which is already paying many times what the rate was just a decade ago. The only takers for this unskilled seasonal employment here are micronesian immigrants (here in the US because we nuked their islands in the 50s) and low scale WWOOF workers. Legal immigrants do fly here and work the coffee season and then fly back to California but not enough to make up for the shortfall of pickers.