The First 100 days

It's pretty clear well over 70% of Trump voters agree with her on immigration (see my post above).

Trump famously requested a galley proof of Coulters' just finished Immigration book as he was plotting if, when and how he should join the race. If you can recall that initial Trump announcement speech, there were elements in that speech lifted directly from her book. By my estimation, it was the single most important position which created his early lead (which he never gave up). It also helped him swallow the other candidates whole. They were overtly unprepared to deal with what the people wanted versus what their financial masters wanted. And if Trump had not entered the race, they would have never been smoked out like that on immigration. The loudest crowd reaction at his rallies and speeches has always been this issue, and this remains true even today.

But I dont know about after today -- I will be interested to see how that works iteself out.

 

Reminder, Trump has already accomplished my (and I lot of you, I bet) top items:

1) Not be Hillary
2) Conservative SCOTUS pick

Everything after that is gravy. Let's not be greedy.

 

I did make that case already

 

Here was Coulter just after the election, on how Trump could screw it up for himself

"HOW TRUMP COULD RUIN HIS PRESIDENCY

Soon after Trump's announcement speech, I said he would win the nomination and likely the election. It wasn't that hard to predict. For anyone familiar with the Republican Party's repeated betrayals of the American people, it was a 2-foot putt.

I issue this warning with the same certitude -- in fact, for the exact same reason I knew anyone running on Trump's platform would have unbreakable support from millions of voters.

* * *
If Trump betrays voters on immigration, he can have as many rallies as he wants, but Americans will say, Been there, done that -- you screwed us. He will never escape the stink of broken campaign promises.
​

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2016-11-30.html

 

More -- tell me which part is wrong

 

@Joe Fan, I expected that if Trump was elected with the majority R Congress, getting a wall and all the other things he ran on accomplished would be a no brainer. The Congress is letting his base down, IMO. How can he just erect a wall on his own?

 

Fair point, I do blame Congress more than Trump
I laid that out above too

Click enlarge once to view it all

 

Of all people, Mitch McConnell may be the person to save us from this DACA cliff dive

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/m...t-of-immigration-reform-talks/article/2634397

McConnell did not promise to include protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients in any potential immigration reform legislation, and said only that he spoke with Trump about "the need for strong security measures and the need to address DACA."​

 

If that's the bar, then anyone with a pulse and an R after their name would have accomplished this.

IMO, he won the Republican nomination because he was Trump... He won the presidency because she was Hillary.

 

He's trying to send a message to GOPe. Work with me or I will make deals with the Dems, which your voters will not like and will blame you. If he has to trade DACA in order to get the wall, I am OK with that.

 

The strategy is not hard to recognize. R's in Congress screwed him at every turn and refused to pass his agenda. Even on Obamacare they vowed to repeal for years and he gave them a blank check to fill in.

He knows R's plan to gut his tax proposal. And R support for wall funding is not there so he needs to create it another way.

All he's doing with the Dems is creating as much leverage as possible for R's to work with him before the big policy issues are at stake.

So he makes a toothless deal with the Dems on the debt ceiling and now signals he plans to compromise with them on DACA without wall funding.

All this comes before crucial policy decisions will fall in Congress' lap. He's baiting the R's to get off their *ss and work with him by dangling a new dance partner.

At the same time he's baiting his base to push back on what he's signaling and cause an uproar, which in turn will direct a fire towards the R's in Congress.

DT's baiting game with R's and the base is obvious when analyzing the past, present, and preferred future landscape instead of kneejerking over small singular events.

 

They'd have to get elected first, which I say that could not do since they could not even beat Trump in the primaries.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

I strongly disagree DT's base will turn on him if he agrees to a path (time and money) to citizenship for those currently in DACA with no exceptions for family extensions, IF....

He gets other border security measures, illegal reforms, AND wall funding.

There are plenty in the base who see the DACA debate from both sides. The problem all have is DACA is aunacceptable without addressing the numerous issues with other current illegal immigrants and potential for new illegals. With all that still unaddressed, DACA laws will be a huge magnet for new illegals.

Address the other illegal issues (tighter security, wall, e-verify, no sanctuary, etc) and many in his base would be surprisingly compassionate towards DACA recipients.

 

Why would any Democrat vote for wall funding?

 

Yeah, I don't see that happening. The best they can hope for is rebuilding what's already in place which is what they are doing now.

 

What's sad is that a real immigration enforcement action could be done. Instead of pushing for the wall (which would do nothing to stop the massive number of visa overstays), he could be pushing for the far more effective and far more politically defensible ideas of mandatory e-verify and private enforcement combined with more traditional border enforcement. It would be much harder for Democrats to attack those initiatives, and they'd be far less polarizing (despite being more effective), which means a trade for DACA would be easier to use as a bargaining chip.

 

GOP Chief of Staff on the Hill --

"Everyone is against it. The phones won't stop.
I've never seen anything like this." ​

 

It doesnt matter what they say about immigration reform, they dont mean it. They never have. You should know this by now. It's been happening for a long time. Their credibility on this issue is zero.

 

I was working in DC at the time of GHWB's ‘read-my-lips’
Will this DACA caving be a similar moment?

 

Mandatory e-verify and private enforcement don't rely on anything somebody says.

 

Heh. OK, sure this option has always had some appeal to DC politicians.
Why?
Because it shifts the burden away from

Spoiler

their lazy asses

. Puts it all on the private sector. This has always been my objection to EV. I prefer they have the courage and conviction to do their own jobs instead of just placing the burden back on the people. Yes, I get that this is asking for alot. But there you go.

In any event, your idea still has the old problem that even this type of burden-shifting legislation would require some initial action by them.
And I havent seen any proof they can even do this much. Have you?
Why?
The answer to this is always the same. A politicians' first mental math is always to calculate what effect the proposed action might have on his/her/its odds of re-election. Any type of "comprehensive immigration reform" is going to make them all skittish. We already know from recent experience that nothing lights up DC phone lines like immigration reform proposals.

My prediction is this -- we will know we are screwed if whatever they come up with is hidden. If the bill is not made public. If all we learn about it is from various leaks from "persons not authorize to comment." And it will be time to duck & cover if we hear something like, "We need to pass it first in order to learn what is in it."

 

The 1986 Amnesty (Simpson-Mazzoli Act) made employers attest to their employees immigration status and made it illegal to knowingly hire illegal aliens. You can see how well that worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986

Immediately there were complaints that it caused a reduction in the employment of Hispanics and was discriminatory. I'm sure they'd find something discriminatory about E-Verify too.

No matter what immigration reform is passed by Congress, the liberal judiciary will shoot holes in it. That's why we need The Wall. We need to physically stop illegals from setting foot on American soil. Once they're here, the Left thinks they are endowed with all the rights of American citizens, including the right to vote.

 

Further proof Trump reads Hornfans?

 

Actually what I'm talking about has never had appeal with DC politicians. I'm not entirely sure what you mean. DC politicians have generally favored having border control officers primarily to give the illusion that something is being done and then taking no serious action to remove people or stop anything unless it's dropped right into their laps.

What I'm suggesting doesn't put everything on the private sector. I'm all for border security and the feds doing their jobs. If we want to build a wall as part of that, go ahead and build a wall. I don't particularly care. My hostility to a wall is that it's a massive political distraction. On the merits, I don't think it's especially consequential one way or the other. However, as a practical matter, that isn't and has never been enough. Remember, visa overstays are a huge problem, and the Wall does nothing about those, because those people are entering legally.

Accordingly, employers need an affirmative duty not to hire illegal aliens, and that duty needs to be actionable if violated and with real teeth. Furthermore, they need to fear that kind of action, even if the politicians don't prosecute them. That's where the private enforcement enters the picture.

You're probably right about this.

You do know what I did for a living, right Bro? lol I know about IRCA. The problem with it was that it has an "I'm stupid" defense. We talk about fake Social Security cards as if they're a big benefit to the illegal immigrant (and they are), but what they really are is a legal defense to the employer hiring the illegal immigrant. If caught, he can pull out his copy of the fake SS card, claim he didn't know the employee was illegal, and he's basically off the hook unless someone can prove that he knew they were fake. Mandatory E-Verify is about taking that off the table. With mandatory E-Verify, it's basically impossible not to know you're hiring an illegal immigrant. And let's not BS. How many construction companies actually think all their workers are legal?

As part of any E-verify requirement, we also need to grant civil immunity to an employer who refuses to hire someone on the basis that E-Verify did not verify their right to work in the United States. If the employer refuses to hire you because E-Verify didn't establish your right to work in the United States, you should have absolutely no cause of action to sue the employer for his refusal to hire. (If he's not checking E-Verify and is just turning you away because you're a Mexican, obviously that's another matter.)

 

Those are both great things. In addition, Trump has an actual foreign policy other than apologize and surrender. I am thankful for all of those things.

However, we are still adding to the debt at Obama level rates. Obamacare or something damn near like it will continue to suck money from every non ruling class individual in the country. Income tax cuts are not going to help anyone who actually pays income tax - we may actually get income tax increases under the Trump/Schumer/Pelosi regime. And the influx of illegals appears to have resumed after a brief pause. So, Trump is better than Hillary, Obama and Jimmy Carter. But that is not saying much. And it's not being greedy to want the President to address the problems that will continue the decline of our once great nation.

 

Your plan sounds good on paper, I'm sure the IRCA looked good back in '86, but I'm skeptical that a legislative solution will work for long in the current environment. There will be a million legal challenges that tie up the court system and grant delay after delay.

Cities like NYC, LA, and San Francisco, which regularly defy ICE, will not enforce any mandated requirements on their local businesses. It will fall to ICE or some other branch of the federal government to enforce them. Then, when a Kamala Harris or Cory Booker becomes President, they'll order the enforcement agency to cease harassing those poor business owners.

I believe you've got to stop the barbarians at the gate, not after they get into the city.

 

If you're a government contractor, you're already required to use e-verify. It work well. The problem with the IRCA is that it put the requirement to verify but no mechanism to do so. Looking at an fake DL, birth certificate and/or SS card the average HR person or manger wouldn't be able to tell the difference or care. With E-Verify, the employer doesn't have to worry about validation, I simply need to get their required I-9 documents and send them to the Feds to validate. Then they send me back a pass/fail with reason. Requiring all employers to use everify (not just gov contractors) would eliminate the supply of jobs for illegal aliens for anything but under the table pay.