The administration’s decision not to reverse the DACA policy is an announcement that the president played his voters for fools.
.. The New York Times reports today that Trump will extend indefinitely the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that confers residency and work rights on 800,000 people who illegally entered the United States as minors.
.. During the campaign, Trump had repeatedly promised to end the protected status of this group, the so-called Dreamers. In office, however, he had postponed a decision about their status. In the first three quarter of 2017, the Trump administration allowed the program to continue to operate. It issued some 17,000 new “Dreamer” visas and renewed more than 107,000 others as they came due.
.. This looked like the beginning of a legislative strategy on immigration reform: preserve DACA as a potential concession to be offered in a trade for other things
.. But to get something, you always have to give something. The Deferred Action program was the give. And Trump just gave it away for free.
.. The Trump administration is stepping up the tempo of arrests and raids. But without a stronger legislative basis for enforcement—including above all meaningful penalties for employers of illegal labor—that tempo will last only as long as Trump’s first cabinet
.. if Democrats take either house of Congress (or both) in 2018, they can cut or eliminate the funding for such enforcement.
.. The wall isn’t being built, won’t be built, and was anyway never anything more than an expensive symbol.
.. Exactly why Trump betrayed his most ardent supporters will be a study for reporters and psychologists. Was it the influence of his daughter and son-in-law? The advice of his pollsters and political strategists? Or was there no plan at all, just a consequence of his administration’s utter ineffectuality at passing anything through Congress—and the president’s own overwhelming concentration on his business interests and legal troubles?
Only Mass Deportation Can Save America
In the matter of immigration, mark this conservative columnist down as strongly pro-deportation. The United States has too many people who don’t work hard, don’t believe in God, don’t contribute much to society and don’t appreciate the greatness of the American system.
.. I speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning.
.. Crime? A study by the Cato Institute notes that nonimmigrants are incarcerated at nearly twice the rate of illegal immigrants, and at more than three times the rate of legal ones.
.. More illegal immigrants identify as Christian (83 percent) than do Americans (70.6 percent), a fact right-wing immigration restrictionists might ponder as they bemoan declines in church attendance.
.. Business creation? Nonimmigrants start businesses at half the rate of immigrants, and accounted for fewer than half the companies started in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005.
.. Nor does the case against nonimmigrants end there. The rate of out-of-wedlock births for United States-born mothers exceeds the rate for foreign-born moms, 42 percent to 33 percent.
.. And then there’s the all-important issue of demographics.
.. Bottom line: So-called real Americans are screwing up America. Maybe they should leave, so that we can replace them with new and better ones: newcomers who are more appreciative of what the United States has to offer, more ambitious for themselves and their children, and more willing to sacrifice for the future. In other words, just the kind of people we used to be — when “we” had just come off the boat.
.. We do not usually find happiness by driving away those who would love us. Businesses do not often prosper by firing their better employees and discouraging job applications. So how does America become great again by berating and evicting its most energetic, enterprising, law-abiding, job-creating, idea-generating, self-multiplying and God-fearing people?
Trump Grows Discontented With Attorney General Jeff Sessions
Few Republicans were quicker to embrace President Trump’s campaign last year than Jeff Sessions, and his reward was one of the most prestigious jobs in America. But more than four months into his presidency, Mr. Trump has grown sour on Mr. Sessions, now his attorney general, blaming him for various troubles that have plagued the White House.
.. Mr. Trump accused Mr. Sessions’ department of devising a “politically correct” version of the ban — as if the president had nothing to do with it.
.. He has intermittently fumed for months over Mr. Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election
.. In Mr. Trump’s view, they said, it was that recusal that led eventually to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.
.. “I believe it is unprecedented for a president to publicly chastise his own Justice Department.”
.. Then he added: “The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court — & seek much tougher version!”
But the messages caused considerable head scratching around Washington since it was Mr. Trump who signed the revised executive order and, presumably, agreed to the legal strategy in the first place.
.. “What he’s saying is, ‘I’m the president, I’m the tough guy, I wanted a very tough travel ban and the damn lawyers are weakening it’ — and clients complain about lawyers all the time,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “I see this more as a client complaining about his lawyer
.. much of the past two months of discomfort and self-inflicted pain for Mr. Trump can be tied in some way back to that recusal
When America Barred Italians
Lombroso, a traitor to his own people, was convinced that there was such a thing as a “natural born criminal.” He measured the heads and body parts of thousands of fellow Italians — particularly Southerners — and came up with a description that matched the description of most of the immigrants coming over at the time: short, dark, hairy, big noses and ears.
.. He compared them to lower primates and said they were more likely to commit violent crimes when they arrived in the United States than immigrants from Germany, Norway, Austria, Sweden, England and every other European country.
Lombroso — and a growing sea of American nativists — branded the Southern Italians savages and rapists, blaming them for the crime that was on the rise in the United States.
.. The Immigration Act of 1924 barred most Italians from coming into the country — causing immigration from Italy to fall 90 percent. Even though the vast majority of those coming to America were good, honest working people and not criminals.
Italian-Americans who today support the president’s efforts to keep Muslims and Mexicans out of the country need to look into their own histories — and deep into their hearts. After all, they’re just a couple of generations removed from that same racism, hatred and abuse.