The Issue Or The Solution?

One of the problems with Washington is that if there is a problem, the political types will always try to figure out if solving it is the answer or if playing up the issue and the fact that it is not solved will gain votes. That is one of many reasons it is so hard to get things done. It is a shame that our politicians have forgotten that they are supposed to work for the voters and that they were sent to Washington to accomplish things. There are a few aspects of illegal immigration that make it very difficult to solve. The Democrats want the issue and the future voters. The Republican corporate types want cheap labor. There is also a school of thought that leaving the issue of the ‘dreamers’ unsolved will bring out Democratic voters–another reason Democrats would rather have the problem than the solution. Meanwhile, no one in Washington is looking at the negative impact of illegal workers on the salaries of Americans with low skills.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article today about the failure of Congress to pass a bill to help the ‘dreamers.’ He pointed out some of the last minute things that were added to one ‘compromise’ bill.

The article quotes a Washington Post article:

[A]s the “war room” of administration lawyers and policy experts examined the 64-page text on Wednesday, it was a handwritten note on the final page that set off the loudest alarm bells. That section dealt with setting in law DHS’s priorities for enforcement. Under the proposal, the agency would focus its powers on immigrants with felonies or multiple misdemeanors, who were national security threats and who had arrived in the country after a certain date.

Scribbled in the margins was a date: June 30, 2018 [Note: an end of January date in the typed text was crossed out].

The administration team was dumbstruck: In addition to making it harder for DHS to deport all of those already here illegally, lawmakers were opening the door to a surge of new unauthorized immigrants by setting an effective “amnesty” date four months in the future.

“No one who has worked on immigration issues in the administration or on the Hill was aware of any legislation that had ever been proposed and scheduled to receive a vote on the floor of the Senate that created an amnesty program effectively for those who arrive in the future,” said a DHS official who helped lead the review. “That would clearly and unequivocally encourage a massive wave of illegal immigration and visa overstays.”

(Emphasis added by Paul Mirengoff)

What this bill would do would be to extend amnesty to anyone who arrived before June 30. Does anyone believe that setting that date would not encourage a flood of illegal immigrants wanting to arrive before the deadline. There is no way anyone who read the bill all the way through and understood its consequences could support it.

The article at Power Line concludes:

Perhaps some wanted to maximize the amnesty, while others were too lazy to read to the end of bill or too clueless to grasp the consequences of what they read.

From the Democrats’ perspective, was the prospective amnesty something they thought they could sneak through or was it a poison pill? Some have speculated that Democrats don’t want any deal that includes a wall and would like (or be okay with) a political landscape in which the Dreamers are still in limbo.

Perhaps Democrats saw inclusion of the handwritten note as a win-win. Either they get all those new illegal immigrants ensconced here or they blame the administration for doing nothing for Dreamers.

Today’s Post story looks like implementation of the second option.

When you hear the Democrats complain that President Trump refused to help the ‘dreamers,’ remember that it was the Democrats who made sure the bill would not be passed. It is obvious that the issue is of more value to the Democratic party than a solution.