In remarks from from the Diplomatic Reception Room on Saturday afternoon, President Trump offered a compromise to get the wall on the Southern Border funded in exchange for Amnesty for Dreamers, their extended families, the Bridge Act – which would extend protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – and to extend the legal status of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders.
Wow. All these new Democrat voters for a demand for $5.7 billion for wall money. Exactly how much wall will that build?
The question now, is will the duo of Pelosi and Schumer accept this and suffer the ire of their caucus’ from the left – or will they reject it, keeping the government shut down? If they reject this, they will OWN the government shut down.
If they reject this offer from the President, he has flat-out said he will use Executive Order to build his wall – so I hope to god they do.
If Democrats accept this offer, a number of things may happen, all of them bad: The caravans will continue coming, knowing that if they get through, they will get benefits and eventually citizenship and voting rights. Illegal immigration will continue, because the magnet will now be even stronger.
And President Trump will not be reelected in 2020.
The problem for Trump – Dems know this – if they don’t make a deal, current DACA recipients will remain protected from deportation for several more months at minimum. So where’s their incentive for any compromise?
Here’s the President’s offer to “break the log jam” as he just said to get the government open, stop the crisis at the border and as Trump said; “end this once and for all with a passionate response to our ongoing tragedy at our Southern border.”
Trump said he incorporated “rank and file” Democrats in his compromise offer and said he hoped this will make it palatable to Democrats acceptance. He wants their “enthusiastic support” and pledged to not let the “radical left” control the border
- $800 million in “humanitarian assistance”
- $805 million for drug detection technology
- additional 2,740 border agents and law enforcement
- 75 new immigration judges
- new system for Central American children to apply for asylum in their own country
- $5.7 billion in funding for a physical barrier on the US/Mexico border. Trump’s not budging on this. The White House has already “conceded” that the barrier will be made of steel poles — which is what experts and border agents wanted anyway — rather than solid concrete. Per a letter sent earlier this month, the administration could build 243 miles of barriers with the $5.7 billion it’s requesting, most of which would be built in the Rio Grande Valley.
- The BRIDGE Act: Three years of temporary protections for DACA recipients. On DACA, Trump is embracing Graham’s BRIDGE Act, which would extend DACA recipients’ existing deportation protections and work permits for three more years. In theory, Congress would use that time to work out a permanent solution for DREAMers; but the last time the White House tried that, by giving Congress six months to address DACA before sunsetting it entirely, the gambit did not succeed. During that debate in late 2017 and early 2018, many Republicans gravitated toward bills that would offer DREAMers access to permanent legal status and ultimately to citizenship — more moderate than what Trump is offering now.
- Some extension of protections for TPS holders. Trump is also expected to offer a proposal to extend the legal protections that hundreds of thousands of immigrants have under the Temporary Protected Status program — which is supposed to allow people to stay in the US while their countries recover from war or natural disasters, but which, over the years, has allowed many people to stay and put down roots in the US. TPS, unlike DACA, grants official legal status, but it doesn’t offer any way to apply for a green card or citizenship. Trump’s efforts to end TPS for most countries are held up in a different court fight — so this proposal, like the DACA proposal, would essentially be a legislative extension of the current judicially-imposed status quo.
But it’s not happening: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said 30 minutes before Trump’s address, this proposal is DOA. “Trump’s proposal is a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable and in total, do not represent a good faith effort to restore certainty to people’s lives.”
Other Dems agreed said that must Trump to reopen the government so that the two sides can fully negotiate on border security proposals.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump said:
“Everybody knows that walls work. You look at different places they put up a wall, no problem. You look at San Antonio,” Trump said. “You look at so many different places. They go from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities, immediately, immediately.”
Trump cites San Antonio as an example of a city where a border wall has worked. It’s located 150 miles north of Mexico and there is no wall. pic.twitter.com/CyiOiGuCy3
— Adam Best (@adamcbest) January 19, 2019
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