DACA Odds: A Real Risk Of Disaster — But, On Balance, Looks Good.

By Peter Brimelow

01/24/2018

Back in September, when the Trump comet was passing through another of its periodic DACA dalliance phases, I wrote in Now Is The Winter Of Our DACAntent: VDARE.com Counsels Patience (And, Of Course, Vigilance) On Trump,
Trump has wobbled before. He’s always come back. See here, here, here.
Since then, after yet another dalliance phase (or was it two?), Trump has nuked negotiations with his brutal but unanswerable sh*thole question and routed the Democrats after maneuvering them into closing the government to try to force an Amnesty, the first head-to-head party-line clash on the issue that I can recall.

Now basically there are three possible outcomes:

  1. Disaster. The Senate passes some version of the Flake-Durbin-Graham bill, which is basically a Gang Of Eight-type Amnesty, a concept the Establishment appears utterly unable to give up, and GOP Speaker Paul Ryan, a long-time immigration enthusiast, relies on Democratic votes to get it through the House. Soundings inside the Beltway suggest the odds of this are significant but not overwhelming — maybe 40%.
  2. Deadlock. Congress is simply unable to pass any legislation — perhaps because the Democrats won’t give enough in return for a DACA Amnesty; Paul Ryan fears being lynched by his caucus if he relies on Democratic votes; etc. Odds: 40%
  3. Triumph (Sort Of). Democrats accept some version of the Goodlatte-McCaul bill (H.R. 4760), which exchanges a limited Amnesty in exchange for some real patriotic immigration reforms, like ending Chain Migration, imposing e-verify etc. Some Beltway immigration patriot groups like NumbersUSA are so dazzled by the prospect of ANY(!) patriotic immigration reform AT ALL(!!) after ALL THESE YEARS(!!!) that they've signed on: Despite amnesty, DACA bill favors American wage-earners, by Roy Beck, The Hill, January 16 2018. Odds: 20%
My instinctive preference: deadlock. Then ICE could start deporting the DACAns and GOP/GAP could run on patriotic immigration reform in the fall mid-terms.

But it’s worth noting that the combined odds of a favorable outcome are quite high — 60%.

And it’s also worth noting the remarkable situation that Trump, in his weird way, has brought about. As Sean Trende, a Righteous MSM Journalist, says,

Yup. It’s why I suspect a deal comes together. If Trump can get a wall (something I thought had a zero percent chance of being built) and one other item, he’d be bonkers to pass it up. https://t.co/RQq7OGfd9a

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) January 22, 2018

"I thought had a zero percent chance of being built" …

I know Michael Wolff assures us that Trump is a moron. But why are we here?

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