- Worrisome dalliance over immigration matters
- More worrisome is seeming endorsement of going back to the days of logrolling AKA “earmarks” and the “pork barrel.”
- That is not draining the swamp, it is what filled it up
- Look for a rush to end term limits everywhere if “earmarks” becomes the sanctified norm
Distressing enough was the good press Trump has received from his meeting with members of Congress over DACA / DREAMers and the building of the wall. Any time the dominate liberal media backs off of Trump –first be concerned there is some collud’n goin’ on, not with Russians but with home-grown communists like much of the Democrat Party.
Listening to extensive excerpts of the meeting as broadcast on Sean Hannity radio program Trump was not out of touch, he was too much in touch with amnesty/ path to citizenship/ essentially open borders types. Hannity was his usual effusive self in praise for Trump as if the big issue was allaying criticism of Trump as unstable. Who wants “stable” as in normative if normative is part of the problem with politics?
Trump was indeed presidential in the meeting, and that is not necessarily a high compliment given the differing but egregious problems emanating from Obama and Bush and Clinton when they were deemed acting presidential. Presidential for Republicans is when they compromise. For Democrats it is when they actually abuse power.
We have not seen the DACA/ DREAMer legislation, so we should withhold judgement. If it involves any continuation of a path to citizenship without getting back in line as to that aspect of their residency then it will be an offense, a crime against humanity to exercise the hyperbole of the left, to law-abiding prospective immigrants everywhere.
That Trump is insisting on a wall “where its needed” is practical. His supposed continued insistence on ending chain migration as it is practiced is good although we wonder if the compassion visited on DREAMers won’t come into play. Any codification of delay for deportation of illegal entrants for new or recent illegal entrants because they come as children violates “family reunification” as the adult parents are not exempted.
We tend to like a point system whereby after vetting that if you have family here who are legal citizens, that can increase your standing. As regards ending the immigration lottery, something Trump continues to insist on, the primary reform we see necessary is not necessarily ending it (if you are a poor or working class schlep in another country I would give you a chance ) but of course with adequate vetting and applying it to quotas that apply to individual countries. That only the professionals and well-educated can come over is not a good fit to my political economy theories. It will only aggravate brain drain in countries that need qualified professionals. Although we would be happy to take all of Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear scientists.
Ann Coulter was an early and vociferous (and objectionable in her way of doing it) proponent of Trump as a candidate. She is now using her “talents (tweets)” to tell Trump to dance with the ones that brung him on immigration. That we can relate too although all of us should take a little wait and see approach.
That is particularly difficult having heard the musing by Trump in the same meeting of the good ol’ days when ear marks, logrolling was — the coin of the realm; MO; do’in business, scratch mine . . . . how things are done. The truth is that it has not totally left the scene, it is still around, sometimes not as obvious, occurring in back channels in the mark-ups and committee write-ups. Don’t sanctify it.
R Mall
