Dreamers and the Paralysis of Decision Making

[Stavros]

dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of
the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

I wonder what your views are on DACA and the 'Dreamers' who have become a pawn, I daresay an unwilling pawn in the absurd confrontation taking place in Congress. I am not an American, but I don't think any state can not have a policy on immigration. That some people who have lived most of their lives in the US but are now being deported seems to me a waste of human resources, but raises a question that has often been asked in the UK -what would actually be the impact on society and the economy if immigration were halted and existing immigrants for whatever reasons, 'returned' to the land of their birth? And not a few, but millions.

That Congress cannot agree a budget because of this issue is surely a problem of process that has been introduced since bi-partisan politics broke down as part of the internal civil war not just between the two main parties but also it seems within those parties, on this issue the Republicans. There must be a better way of managing the agenda, one way would be for the vote on the budget to actually be about the budget and not some ancillary issue that then derails it. This mania for filling every crevice of law with items not related to it is most odd, it has been noted in the tax bill.

Is there nothing you can do to change the way these bills make their way through Congress?

And should the Dreamers stay and fulfill their ambitions?

[buttslinger]

OK, here's the thing- When I was a kid I never saw a "colored" person in class until Middle School.
Back then Blacks in my suburban area lived in an area that once housed George Washington's Slaves!!!
To see any Foreigners, you had to drive into the big city.
Today, in Northern Virginia, half the people you see aren't "American"
But from friends who moved down to North Carolina, the joke is
"I went into Walmart and everyone was white!!!!"
And this is the reason Trump is President right now.

Even though people overwhelming poll in favor of leaving the kids born here HERE, if you ask those same people should we shut down the Government for them, they say NO. What do the Republicans intend to propose, sending goon squads to homes to pull crying children out of their beds and send them back to a country they've never been in??

The Fucking Republicans have been shitting on the rug on purpose long before that Gorsuch stunt.
To the Republicans, Democrats have been totally ignored until now, when they need them to get 60 votes in the Senate. It's time to rub their nose in the shit a little bit....... Until The House goes Democrat, then Pelosi can cook up committees to investigate Trump and his Goons nonstop, if they're still around.

Calmer voices than mine have said that realistically Immigration has to slow down, they had to change the immigration system at the close of the VietNam War, so our allies wouldn't die in a bloodbath, but they never changed the system back. It's not healthy to a Generation to shock it with too much change too fast. Obama deported lots of illegals.

[trish]

Dreamers are people who were children when they were brought illegally into the U.S. They have lived here their entire lives and have never known or visited their country of origin. In many cases English is essentially their native language. Those who are not still children have grown to adulthood here in the U.S. Their friends are here, their work is here. They contribute to their communities, they pay taxes like everyone else, and they pay into to our Social Security program without the expectation of benefit.

Somewhere between 85% to 90% of Americans regardless of political party empathize with the Dreamers and do not want them deported. Besides the empathy factor, one must also realize we’ve already invested in the Dreamers through public education and they’ve already proven their worth and potential. Ripping 800 000 people out of the fabric of our economy and our community damages not only Dreamers but ourselves, morally as well as economically.

As large as 800 000 seems, it is a small number compared to the 11 000 000 unauthorized immigrants reported by the Pew Research Center in 2015. One would think this should be a no-brainer for the GOP. Reinstate DACA. Most ordinary conservative voters will be happy. And there will still be more than 10 000 000 unauthorized immigrants one can falsely blame for crime, drugs and job snatching. DACA would be such a small compromise, compared to the compromise Dems are asked to swallow: billions for a useless, environmentally disastrous border wall.

The GOP dilemma is how to agree to DACA, save face and keep The-Infant-in-Chief(and his solid 30% base of racist dimwits) happy at the same time. Keeping DACA out of the budget negotiations would be a way to let the GOP and the President to save face, but the Dems don’t trust (with good reason) that the GOP will do anything about DACA before the March deadline or that the President will sign a bipartisan agreement re-instituting DACA if presented with one. Making it part of the budget negotiations is the only assurance the Dems have that DACA will ever get done. This is what happens when your POTUS is a compulsive liar and a shit-for-brains racist to boot.

[Stavros]

Making it part of the budget negotiations is the only assurance the Dems have that DACA will ever get done. .

I appreciate the content of your post, but this last comment. Looking at it as an outsider, it seems to me that one of the causes of gridlock in your legislative process is precisely this trend to introduce into one bill an issue that belongs somewhere else. It means that a Bill that should establish a budget for the governance of the country is side-lined, or even hi-jacked by social legislation that itself may require more time to debate than the budget. It seems all but incredible that your Congress cannot put together a budget package that should be an agreement between Congress and the President on the amount of money being made available for the whole range of government business.

DACA as an issue in itself has merits, and there must be a way of acknowledging the contributions already made by them as your post eloquently makes clear. But to make these worthy people part of a political game is to diminish that contribution, and I find it hard to believe there is no other mechanism to debate this, given that the President has lost the plot on immigration and there are rumours that even Cadaver McConnell is half-alive to a deal.

Either way I think you need to make serious changes to the way in which your Congress passes (or doesn't pass) legislation.

[buttslinger]

The DACA policy was created by Obama through Executive Order and rescinded by the Trump administration on September 5, 2017, but full implementation of the rescission was delayed six months to give Congress time to decide how to deal with the population that was previously eligible under the policy.
I think if our Founding Fathers were around they might Hang Trump immediately and then enslave all illegal aliens.
They had a certain pragmatic flair that is severely lacking today.

[buttslinger]

It's hard to separate the method from the madness, did Democrats cave, or are they going to use this as just one more talking point to carve the Turkey next November?
Since there is no way DACA is going to get through the House, I think what we will end up with is Dreamers remain illegal, but they'll be largely ignored. Leave it hanging over their heads like a warrant. Keep them out of Mayberry. It is kinda scary that a Congress that should be ten times as informed as even an interested Observer seem to be completely lost.
Maybe it's that rug pattern on the Senate Floor, Communist Plot?
I think it's pretty obvious that truth is a dirty word in the White House, but I wonder how much Republicans in Congress know about the future of the Mueller Investigation, maybe they're going through the Motions while they look for future big money Consulting Jobs.

[Stavros]

Buttslinger you may or may not agree that the Republicans won the election by promoting fear, and the image of a 'Broken America' which is not met with in reality. During the campaign much was made of the crime rate in Chicago, disgraceful remarks were levelled at Latin Americans either living in the USA or seeking to do so, and so on and so forth. The example of Boston and New York City where crime has actually declined in the last ten to twenty years was avoided because those cities have been able to reduce crime through co-operative rather than confrontational policing.

There is a bitter irony in the round-up of illegal immigrants some of whom have lived in the US for 40 years, such as Lukasz Niec:

Lukasz Niec was 5 years old when his parents brought him and his sister to the United States from Poland. With two suitcases in tow, his parents — both doctors — left behind a country on the verge of social turmoil. It was 1979, about two years before the country’s authoritarian communist government declared martial law.
Niec received a temporary green card and, in 1989, became a lawful permanent resident. He grew up in Michigan, went to medical school, became a doctor, and raised a daughter and stepdaughter.
Niec, now 43, never fathomed that his legal status in the United States would become an issue. With a renewed green card, and nearly 40 years in the country, his Polish nationality was an afterthought for Niec, his sister told The Washington Post. He doesn’t even speak Polish.
But on Tuesday morning, immigration authorities arrested Niec at his home, just after he had sent his 12-year-old stepdaughter off to school. Niec, a physician specializing in internal medicine at Bronson Healthcare Group in Kalamazoo, Mich., has been detained in a county jail ever since, awaiting a bond hearing and possible deportation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.ccbb023be41e

The policy is driven by the 'Great Fear', that 'White America' is being eclipsed and that in ten or twenty years time most Americans will not have English as their mother tongue, and their skins will be darker. The war against immigrants is not just a matter of law, it is a form of social engineering that sweeps up more than those 'undesirable' Spanish-speaking rapists, drug dealers, petty thieves, bartenders, taxi drivers, gardeners, dentists and chemical engineers -thus the sad case of Lukasz Niec is the result of someone ticking a box and imposing the law.

The irony being that the President has claimed that the US should move to a 'points system' that would, in fact, be more favourable to experienced physicians like Niec entering ,rather than being thrown out of, the US. So absurd is this situation that Niec could be 'sent back' to Poland, a country he does not know, whose language he does not speak -and then re-apply to enter the US! My guess is that because his name is not Manuel, he may have his case reviewed and be released from prison. But who knows with this ruthless regime?

[buttslinger]

People in the USA who watch CNN might see Ken Cuccinelli on, spouting out drivel all pro-Republican, non-stop. When he ran for office his TV ads talked about Child Molesters. My Brother actually worked with Ken Cuccinelli long ago on School stuff, and said he was pretty reasonable and nice in real life, easy to work with and get things done.
I would be Amazed if the picture that is projected towards the PUBLIC has much of anything to do with how both the Democrats and Republicans actually do their job. Illegal Immigation has been ignored by Congress since before Reagan. There is a reason none of the 16 Republican hopefuls brought it up during the debates, EXCEPT Trump. Because it's a loser platform in real life. Sadly, it's not racism that will get Trump out of the White House early, it's RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA. On Conservative talk media, they try to keep the Russia talk to a minimum and try to downplay it, but Mueller is the man of the hour, what he finds might change the face of American Politics and the World.
Whenever we bring up social injustice in other shithole countries, they always bring up racism in the US. Putting RACIST #1 in jail may really boost our street cred around the world, and maybe outer space. If Putin gets caught in the web, all the better.
I'm practically peeing my pants in anticipation.
Like a little girl.