Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Republicans Working Hard to Save Obama’s Legacy
Conservative lawmakers led by Thom Tillis are crafting a bill they call the conservative Dream Act that would provide a path to permanent residency to people brought here illegally as children, offering President Donald Trump an escape hatch on one of his most vexing immigration challenges
All the “Conservative Dream Act” does is codify DACA into law. How is this “conservative?”
And Republican Governor John Kasich… who did an end-run around his own state legislature to implement the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in Ohio… has teamed up with Democrat Governor John Hickenlooper to propose a plan for making Obamacare subsidies to insurance companies permanent.
The Trump Administration should commit to making cost sharing reduction (CSR) payments. … Also, Congress should put to rest any uncertainty about the future of CSR payments by explicitly appropriating federal funding for these payments at least through 2019. This guarantee would protect the assistance working Americans need to afford their insurance, give carriers the confidence they need to stay in the market, increase competition, and create more options for consumers. Because the cost of this initiative is already included in the budget baseline, the appropriation would not have budget consequences.
Congress should create a fund that states can use to create reinsurance programs or similar efforts that reduce premiums and limit losses for providing coverage. The House and Senate each recently proposed $15 billion annually for states to address coverage and access disruption in the marketplace with a goal of lowering premiums and saving money on premium subsidies.
So, with a Republican majority in Congress and a Republican in the White House… we get a proposal to pass Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants and a proposal to lock Obamacare into place.
What’s the point?
Published in Politics
This is the type of crap that make the charges from ‘Conservative Inc.’ Against Trump ring so hollow (and I’m not much of a fan of PDT at all) but really find myself on the cusp of voting for some ‘pure/fringe’ party so I don’t feel like such a sucker.
What’s the point indeed. In fact, the only point I can see is proving once and for all that there’s barely any difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Since when are Tillis and Kasich actual Conservatives? I know they call themselves that but they are actually members of the “squishy” Republican plurality … not the Conservative minority.
Once more the GOPe shows us how we get more Trump. It will be interesting to see if they keep this up next year. I am certain that Jeff Flake will have a primary challenge from Kelli Ward who ran a respectable campaign against McCain last year where he promised to vote for repeal and then gave his voters the finger. Right now I hear Ward is 26 % ahead of Flake and she has good name recognition.
There is more behind this story. I agree that DACA was an unconstitutional executive order. However, it is something that Congress should pass as a very, very narrow statute, which conforms to the outlines of DACA. Children have no free agency. They were brought here by their parents. Many of them cannot speak their native tongue. It is unfair, on its face, that they be deported.
The sad fact of the matter was that Senator Rubio was working on a narrow legislative solution to DACA before Obama entered that executive order, which was a showing of bad faith by Obama. If Obama had deferred to Rubio, then that narrow statute would have been enacted. Obama did not; shame on him for poisoning the well.
But the fact remains that in all of the various shades of grey, the most morally blameless would be a young man or woman who was brought to the United States as a child or infant, without any moral agency.
I predict that if a statutory DACA is narrowly drawn, a discharge petition will be successful and this issue will be brought to the House floor to be voted on.
I’m ok with providing a path to citizenship for people who were brought here as children. On the extreme side are we really going to deport someone who was brought as 2 year old and has lived here all their life? But why not use legislation like this as a bargaining chip to get something conservatives want?
On the extreme side … Yes. Perhaps if the parents had some evidence that we are serious about our own laws they’d stop illegally bringing /sending their kids here. The parents use the kids as a grappling hook to hoist the entire extended family into the US through the miracle of chain migration. Nope. Play someone else for a patsy. I’m done.
We have American kids with dreams too. And veterans. American Dreamers. Let’s take care of them first.
The DREAM Act is backdoor Amnesty because once the DREAMERS get citizenship, their families get cut to the front of the Naturalization line.
Not to mention, a lot of these “children” are currently in their thirties. DANA supporters hate it when you bring that up.
The statute could and should be narrowly drawn to not allow chain migration. The statute could also be drawn to provide only legal status and not citizenship.
This is one of those 80-20 issues. When the first “Dreamer” is deported, we will get killed. It is in our best interests to listen to our better angels and allow people who were brought here as children to be able to stay.
Finally, the Dreamers have been educated here already. I understand the objection to uneducated people jumping the line and coming to the United States. But the Dreamers have been educated; wouldn’t it be better to take advantage of allowing educated people have legal status and to contribute to the economy?
I don’t much care as long as there are provisions good behavior and a ban on resident tuition to state colleges.
You and I both know it will not be.
The Chamber of Commerce Republicans do not want to stop illegal and mass immigration.
I cannot help but notice that as soon as PDT floated the idea of rescinding DACA, Republicans immediately sprang into action to save it.
But we are nine months into this Congress and where’s the Border Security bill? There isn’t one.
Do you ever get the feeling that Republicans in congress have been laughing at us the whole time? I really do not want to hear about principles again because none of them seem to have any.
No thanks. I bought this bill of goods once before. We were going to do amnesty just this once and then tighten border security so we’d never be in this position again. Yeah. Right.
Nope. Get them out. Build the wall.
I remember the lies Marco Rubio told us to sell the Gang of 8 Bill. He claimed there would be no citizenship for 10 years; but he never mentioned all the waivers in the bill that let the Obama Administration begin handing out citizenship almost immediately. He said illegal immigrants would have to pay back taxes, but it only required paying taxes for two of the last five years. (Can I get that deal?)
But the biggest lie was that the Gang of 8 Bill contained “Tough Strong Border Security.” Do you know what the Bill actually required? It gave the Obama Administration two years to come up with a plan to secure the border. If the Obama Administration didn’t come up with a plan, then Congress would appoint a commission to find out why they didn’t come up with a plan.
That was what Marco Rubio called “Tough Strong Border Security” provisions.
I really wanted to like Marco Rubio, but he’s a double-talking political skank.
So – how many seriously believe that folks like Tillis and Alexander will be replaced with anyone any better?
It was floated about that Republicans could use some deal on DACA as a bargaining chip to facilitate passage of the RAISE act. Instead, the spineless worms roll over for no gain.
I hear what you are saying. In 1986, there was amnesty for 3 million; in 2017 if Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi got their way, there would be 12 million, and in 2048 there will be 48 million. I completely get that. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
But there could be a new status, akin to a green card, where the holder could not employ chain migration. This legal status could specifically rule out citizenship. I could write that law. Tom Cotton, author of the RAISE Act, could write that law. It could be done. It could be keyed to $X billion for upgrading the wall. It could be keyed to the national enforcement of e-verify. It would NOT be part of a comphrehesive massive bill.
Please read the reaction of other posters; there is precious little support for shipping out a person who was brought here as a two year old, who knows only English, and who has as much of a tie to, say Mexico, as I have to Germany which I have never visited but whose residents share my DNA markers, given my maternal forebearers.
DACA does not involve the 11-12 million; it involves only the 800,000 dreamers who were brought here as children. It is an 80-20 issue, and we will get killed if we don’t address it.
Ask Tom Cotton, author of the RAISE Act, to write the hybrid law.
I find the humanitarian objections to rescinding DACA pretty weak.
They don’t speak Spanish? Well, many of the parents didn’t speak English, yet they somehow managed.
It will disrupt their lives? Sure. And you can blame their parents for putting them in that situation.
They’ll probably be better educated than their average countryman. And they speak English. This may actually afford them some advantage in finding work in Mexico, or Guatemala, or where ever they came from. I know it sounds scary to most gringos to be forced to live and work in some Latin American banana republic, but it can be done. Seems to me like cultural chauvinism to suggest that temporarily living in one of these countries is some form of unspeakable cruelty. They wouldn’t be permanently barred from immigrating legally, would they? I imagine they’d have an easier time navigating the system than most.
Actually, I think I would support deporting many illegal aliens who were supposedly brought here when minors.
First: You have rule of law issues. Same as mentioned by many, it leads to a slippery slope and encourages future illegal aliens to become so for the sake of their children.
Second: You don’t really know when many were brought over. Too many people could try claiming that they were below 18 when crossing the border and as such would then have rights to a immigration hearing and such. Even if many are already granted such hearings, I don’t want to grant any further rights.
Third: The sins of the parents do not confer rights to the children. It may be that we should not consider minors criminals. However, it also does not mean that they are deserving of citizenship. As already mentioned, the chain migration problem would also continue even if you tried to stop it. Whether it be by status or by access to an American who can “vouch” for another, it would be too difficult to remove the advantage of such a program.
What program would I support? After completely securing all borders to have effectively eliminated 90+% of illegal border crossing, visa overstay, and all other forms of questionable immigration practices including citizenship for children born to visitors and illegals, or temporary visa holder like temporary work visa type programs (seasonal, h1b, etc), then I would grant a one time exemption to illegal aliens who have lived in the United States continuously for more than 20 years without any crimes, misdemeanor or felony. They would be given a permanent status like a green card where their children could become citizens on good behavior (no crimes). They would be ineligible for government welfare type benefits in perpetuity except those that they pay into and then only to the portion that they pay, as in social security and others I assume. Obviously that would change with the next generation as they would likely become citizens.
If the children fail to become citizens due to committing crime, I would either send the whole family back to their home country or extend the permanent status where only the next generation has the chance to become citizens. If the children ever return to their home country for extended periods (not just a vacation or family visit), they would lose their citizenship chance and only be able to apply as any other immigrant, though I would grant them the family benefit if their US based family remained in good status.
On the issue of the 2 year old, I would ask that you consider that they must have family in other parts of the world or illegal aliens as family members who they depend(ed) on. Such cases seem harsh, but that is life. Better to keep the family together than have children in the US without supporting family. Just have the minors follow the family.
Then why does it have to be “keyed” to anything? Sounds like the scorpion and frog story.
My understanding is that DACA has benefited some of the approximately 16% of Korean international adoptees whose U.S. citizen parents adopted them legally and then screwed up the naturalization paperwork when they were children, leaving them with illegal status. All of the DACA students I work with on campus so far are East Asian, about half adoptees, and not Latin American – the latter might be a majority, but the population benefiting is pretty diverse.
I absolutely support some form of relief for adults brought over illegally as children (who often don’t find out they are illegal at all until they apply for work or college), but I agree with Paul Ryan that it needs to go through Congress and supplant the extra-legal action of the Obama administration. Public opinion overwhelmingly agrees on this, so it is a good place to take action like that described by @GaryRobbins above to do well and do good at the same time, nixing some of the “Republicans just hate brown people!” arguments about immigration.
The Republican Party does not work that that way. They do not want Tom Cotton writing immigration law. They want Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin writing immigration law.
Furthermore, the only people who can “ask” the Republican Party to do anything and be listened to are the Chamber of Commerce, MegaDonors, and the media.
Which is why you got Trump.
In North Korea, a violator of the law is put in prison along with their children and grandchildren under the Three Generations Rule.
We are not North Korea. We do not punish children for their parent’s illegal behavior.
Here’s what I don’t understand: one of the main arguments for voting for Trump in the primary was that all of the other viable candidates (especially the Senators) belonged to the “GOPe”, and thus could be 100% expected to betray the cause.
Now those Congressmen are doing exactly what was predicted, and yet the people who predicted it seem shocked, shocked!!! to discover that legislators who previously considered a “Dreamers” bill would again be considering on a Dreamer bill. Isn’t this exactly what we expected them to do?
As a constutionalist, I opposed DACA, the dreamer’s Executive Order. This is an issue which should be resolved by Congress. I was thrilled when DAPA failed and was upheld in the Fifth Circuit, and then was upheld by an evenly divided Supreme Court. (Thank you Senator McConnell for holding the line!)
There were 55 votes in the Senate last time to pass a Dreamer bill, only five votes short of breaking a filibuster. There will be the extra five votes this time around to codify the Dreamer Executive Order, and to provide for Legal Status instead of citizenship, so we do not face chain migration, which is the real problem.
Pardon me for butting in, but from @CJ comment – “Seems to me like cultural chauvinism to suggest that temporarily living in one of these countries is some form of unspeakable cruelty”.
Nor should we reward them.
Whose this “WE” of whom you speak? Is there a mouse in your pocket? From my perspective the Republican Party, for which my support was unbound over the past dozen years, has been doing not much but lying to me incessantly. It is up to them now. I am done. I received a call today from the Republican Senatorial Fund asking, of course, for money. I laughed and asked why I should give money to the do-nothing Republican Senators. The young lady stuttered…”Well they are trying.” Trying what? All I see them working hard at is defeating their own Republican President.
Build the wall, deport them all.