OK, so it’s not just a partial shambles:
Obama’s pass-a-bill-or-I’ll act strategy was not just tactically dumb (alienating the very House Republicans it was designed to coerce, stoking activist expectations of an imminent executive overreach to achieve a goal that wasn’t popular enough to sustain the overreaching). It was also substantively dumb – the actual policy assumptions underlying Obama’s proposals (that amnesty doesn’t act as a magnet for further illegal immigration) were disproved by the Latin American reaction to his initial pen-and-phone moves before House Republicans had time to be coerced.
Democrats are still putting on their Goodfellas faces and pretending they have leverage. Dem Whip Steny Hoyer promises a “significant change in policy” if the House does not act in July, according Breitbart News. Senator Dick Durbin says that if Speaker Boehner doesn’t act “the President will borrow the power that is needed to solve the problems of immigration.” (I must have been sleeping in Con Law when they taught the Borrowing Clause.) Senator Robert Menendez defensively declares ”the threat of executive action is not a bluff.”
It’s a bluff. House GOPs should feel free to ignore it, at least through November.** If Obama takes any executive action before then, it will be of the most timid, face-saving variety.
Speaking of Con Law, it would have been appalling, if I weren’t used to it, to hear Xavier Becerra say on Fox News Sunday that it was OK for the president to ignore the Constitution and bypass Congress if what he was doing was popular. Those are the words of a caudillo. The Democrats seem ever-more determined to turn us into a banana republic.
In the local paper (Dallas Morning News) I’ve noticed a style-shift I think may be significant of a larger issue. Sometimes, not always, the DMN refers to the undocumented as “migrant” rather than “immigrant”. This is hardly unprecedented. In the Smothers Brothers era, the Spanish speaking agricultural workers who followed the harvest from south to north were generally and generically called “migrant” workers, even though many were in fact US citizens and held permanent residence in the US.
But now the term migrant is sometimes applied to those in carpet cleaning, brick laying, and other non-agricultural industries, who are long-term resident in the US, but who are (a) not-documented (b) not property-owning, and (and most important) (c) not saving or investing in the US economy. These are workers who work in the US, but send savings home and invest in homes and family amenities in their nations of origin. There are people who are here for the wages but do not otherwise fully participate in our economy. They may, or may not, pay FICA and sales taxes. But most rent, (so avoiding direct property taxes) register no business (avoiding license fees and business taxes) and even avoid banks (so not even indirectly investing in the local economy.)
There are would-be legal immigrants from all over the world who would come here for jobs AND the proverbial “American Dream”. That dream, as I understand the traditional, is to learn English, advance in school, buy land or a shop, grow or make a useful saleable commodity, make a living, see the children fit in as equals… Many (though surely not all) of the undocumented, who do not wait for consular bureaucracies to act before coming in, do NOT intend to invest in themselves, their land, their homes or buildings… they come to essentially exchange their labor, in the US, for the disproportionate buying power of their new dollars in Guatamala, Mexico, El Salvador …
Migrants. Not immigrants.
I wonder if there exists any polling data, by the DMN or other “news” and information teams, who could differentiate and estimate the fractions of undocumented long-term non-citizens in the US into those groups who are by intent migrant vs. immigrant. Surely it is important to policy makers to understand who among these groups wants what, or needs what, before making policy — even if that policy is intended for no better purpose than to “buy votes”. If, for example, 90% of the undocumented never intend to become voters, how much would a politician “spend” to win over the demographic of the currently-undocumented?
There are would-be legal immigrants from all over the world who would come here for jobs AND the proverbial “American Dream”. That dream, as I understand the traditional, is to learn English, advance in school, buy land or a shop, grow or make a useful saleable commodity, make a living, see the children fit in as equals.
My wife is a legal immigrant, so I guess that makes her a chump. She could’ve broken the law like all the cool kids and received free stuff. Instead, she followed the rules, obtained her citizenship, worked, and paid a lot of taxes. Sucker.
The “American Dream” can only be defined by each individual. That’s the beauty of it – we’re each free to pursue happiness as we define it. Some want to own their own business, others want to own a house, and for others, it simply means being allowed to live as they see fit without regard to where they were born or their parents’ social standing. Few countries allow as much freedom in this regard as America, at least for the time being. Our self-proclaimed “elites” want to change all that. They get to live as they see fit while telling everyone else where and how they must live. Screw them with a rusty pipe.
Seems on track to me…flood the zone with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants – a goodly share of them minors, making it politically difficult to oppose because you are going to “….hurt the CHILDREN…”.
In the meantime you’ve added hundreds of thousands to the Democrat voter rolls.
You’ll note that many of them are being moved to blue states…..not a lot of them are being transferred to Wyoming or Montana. This further cements the blue state domination by bulging inner city democrat voters. Some are pushed to Arizona and Texas….all blue voters in states the Dems woudl love to tip.
And as an extra dessert topping, there’s Cloward-Piven such that the system becomes so overloaded, the Feds must step in and maintain order…..i.e. obtain more power.
Oh yes, I left out:
Present the country with a fait accompli which among other things, puts further pressure on Congress for an amnesty bill.
Obama’s actions have also changed the DREAM from being about children who ended up here through no fault of their own, into one of endless hordes of children being falsely tricked into coming here as part of a cynical political tactic. Now Obama has to cope with the very visible results of his position, taking care of lots and lots of unaccompanied children who shouldn’t be here in the first place, along with countless adults who don’t have a job or a place to live. What he’s done is far worse than doing nothing.
As another blogger is fond of saying, better than nothing is a high standard. It’s easy (for the careless, foolish, or malicious) to do worse.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Democrat party activists working South of the border to encourage this human wave.
I just wish both sides would grow up and do their jobs. The Dems passed a stupid bill in the Senate. The House should pass its version. Then they should work it out in committee as the rules state. The GOP going with the “Take our ball and go home” tactic sticks in my craw just an much having a bad law shoved down the American public’s throat.
I just wish both sides would grow up and do their jobs. The Dems passed a stupid bill in the Senate. The House should pass its version.
Why? There is no constitutional requirement that both houses pass some version of an awful idea.
That reminds me of the complaint that just because Democrats have a bill pushing a dumb idea,doesn’t mean that Republicans need their own version of the bill pushing the same dumb idea.
If the existing laws aren’t being enforced, then of what good are additional laws? Would those new laws suddenly be enforced, even as the rest of the laws are not being enforced? And if some laws are enforced an others not, then enforcement is at the whim of… whom, exactly?
This is a very dangerous game the Democrats are playing with border security. The last time an amnesty bill was passed, a direct result was the bombing of the world trade center. This time they’re letting in an invading army.
Remember Obamacare? The Senate passed an abhorrent bill, the house “passed its own version”… and Reid gutted the House version, stuffed his own bill into its covers, and passed it into law.
Not twice, thanks.
Ya, and the House bill didn’t have any relation to the ACA or health care in general.