Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Only Trump cultists are enabling Trump in his infantile wall fantasy. Other conservatives are seeing the situation in a much more realistic, pragmatic and rational manner.

"Joe: President Donald Trump Doesn't Know What It's Like To Miss A Paycheck | Morning Joe | MSNBC"

How the Border Wall Is Boxing Trump In

"Joe: President Donald Trump Doesn't Know What It's Like To Miss A Paycheck | Morning Joe | MSNBC"

[...]

Now, Mr. Trump’s fixation with a border wall — the material embodiment of his keep-them-out immigration agenda — has run headlong into the new realities of divided government, pitting him against Democrats who reject the idea out of hand. The impasse is particularly remarkable given that even some immigration hard-liners do not regard the wall as their highest priority and fear that Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with it will prompt him to cut a deal that trades a relatively ineffectual measure for major concessions on immigration.

“I’ve always thought it created a danger that he would trade almost anything in order to get the wall — I think that’s still a potential danger,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that argues for less immigration. “I’m still worried about that now.”

That fear has been realized at times when Mr. Trump has explored a deal with Democrats on granting permanent legal status for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, known as Dreamers. The president has always walked away at the last moment from committing to preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, but on Friday, FAIR, an anti-immigration group, warned him again that it would be a mistake.

To many conservative activists who have pressed for decades for sharp reductions in both illegal and legal immigration — and some of the Republican lawmakers who are allied with them — a physical barrier on the border with Mexico is barely relevant, little more than a footnote to a long list of policy changes they believe are needed to fix a broken system.

[...]

Chained to a Wall

NumbersUSA, another conservative group that presses for stricter immigration policies, circulated an article last month suggesting that Mr. Trump drop his wall demand in favor of a plan to mandate that all employers use E-Verify, an electronic system that checks immigration status for prospective employees.

The wall “has sucked political capital from the pursuit of other, and arguably better, means to deter illegal immigrants,” wrote Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute.

Yet Mr. Trump has tethered himself to the wall and shows no sign of letting go.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/us/politics/donald-trump-border-wall.html

Any rational and adult president would listen to, and seriously consider, the positions that hard-line
immigration people at the Center for Immigration Studies, that FAIR, and NumbersUSA are taking.

The article is linked in the post this post replies to.