Immigration in the US

Interesting standoff taking shape right now as we get closer and closer to a January 19 drop dead date on a government shutdown.

Both sides think they have the winning argument here.

The issue: DACA. Per guidance from past DHS heads, January is kind of seen as a drop dead date to process DACA applications fully before the March deadline that makes DACA recipients illegal.

The football: CHIP funding. This is a program with wide bi-partisan support that provides medical insurance to 9 million children in low-income families.

How they’re playing it:

For Democrats, a DACA deal is a must-have. Their argument is simple. In 2013, the Senate passed a DACA agreement with 68 votes. The House refused to let that come to the floor for a vote, and it died. The White House originally said they wanted a DACA deal, and a compromise bill between Graham and Durbin was worked out, only to be scuttled by the White House because it didn’t cover enough “security” (namely, wall funding.) Issue further complicated by the “shithole/house” presidential idiocy, and Stephen Miller’s determination to basically not let brown people enter the US anymore.

Democrats think that this will be a winner for them. Democrats standing hard on DACA pretty much creates a GOP nightmare of uniting Latinos (who are a very diverse group) in a common cause and in support of a single party.

Democrats think the Republicans will blink.

On the GOP side, the issue is the White House. Republicans in the senate don’t want to be put on the spot of either having something they lend their votes to be rejected by the President…OR have the House once again refuse to cooperate and reject. They’re hoping that Democrats can be painted with the blame for this, and are especially relishing the idea of running ads against McCaskill, Manchin, Donnelly, and Heitkamp saying the effect of “They let CHIP expire because they wanted illegal immigration to keep happening.” Whatever the morality/truthfulness of that angle may be…it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be effective.

Yeah, I don’t see this as something that will come back on Democrats.

Trump has said he “wants DACA” (not that he knows what that means). The GOP has agreed to DACA, and enough of them are onboard.

So why would Democrats cave for something the opposition is already behind?

The GOP is going to claim that Dems shut down the government, at a time when the GOP controls all three branches. Only the most credulous of Trump supporters (so, almost all of them) will believe this.

And your point is…?

BTW, today at a senate committee, under oath, the DHS Head said that she did not know if Norway was made up of predominantly white people (she did so to protect the President.)

The Head of DHS who seems very unfamiliar with Norwegian demographics is named Kirstjen Nielsen.

They should have asked her where she’s from. No, not where she was born, where are her people from?

This made me larf

Haha. I hate that man so much.

The most shameful part of this testimony is that the DHS Secretary Nielsen first claimed that Trump used tough words and so did the senators. When asked specifically about which Senator used profanity, she could only recall Lindsay Graham. At which point Durbin corrected her, that Sen Graham had just repeated exact Trump’s words, when responding to the president about the inappropriateness of those remarks.

So Nielsen tried to normalize Trump, by putting other senators in the same bucket totally out of context, and apparently only remembered Graham’s statement but not what he was responding to.

Acting like the fact that he swore was the issue is a pretty huge attempt to deflect as well.

No one cared that he swore.

This is some spectacular bullshit, even by Trump admin standards.

Also doesn’t include any of the biggest terror attacks in the US.

I presume these are GOP leaders. Why wouldn’t the Dems force Trump to veto it?

Because they can’t pass anything for Trump to veto without any GOP support?

Why would even the GOP send something to Trump if they knew he wasn’t going to sign it? What good would that do them?

That’s what I mean. The tweet says Hill leaders, but surely it means GOP leaders.

Well, if we pretend the government still functions as designed, the reason would be that Congress passes laws that Congress thinks should be passed, regardless of what the President says.

You didn’t answer my question though. Do you know of examples of democratic congresses sending laws to a democratic president that they knew he wouldn’t sign?

Hmm… I dunno. But the problem is still the same, in that partisan poltiics have broken the way the government is supposed to work.

The Congress is supposed to be somewhat adversarial to the President. They aren’t supposed to be considering the other branch to be part of their “team”.