Trump cites crime and costs associated with illegal immigration; Democrats say he overstates the problem
Here is a look at some of key numbers behind U.S. immigration:
CRIME CONCLUSIONS:
The National Academy of Sciences examined numerous academic studies on crime rates by immigrants and concluded they are less likely than the native-born population to commit crimes. It also concluded that neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence than comparable nonimmigrant neighborhoods. The study didn’t examine crime rates specifically among undocumented immigrants. Overall, crime rates fell in the U.S. as the size of the unauthorized immigrant population rose in the past two decades.
FISCAL IMPACT:
The cost of immigration to U.S. taxpayers remains a subject of debate and disagreement. Immigrants in the country illegally aren’t eligible for most federal benefits, including Social Security, Medicare, housing and food assistance. They pay sales taxes and some tax in other forms, contributing to revenues, but some also benefit from public education and hospital care supported by state and local governments. According the National Academy of Sciences first-generation immigrants in all cost the federal, state and local governments more in benefits than the immigrants produce in taxes. That is reversed for second generation citizens and reversed again for third.
Estimated Fiscal Impact of Immigrants and Their DescendantsSource: National Academies of Sciences: “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences
Why Trump has spared Pelosi from his personal vitriol — so far
The president genuinely respects the incoming speaker, and needs her if he’s going to get anything done in the next two years. But the government shutdown is about to test his restraint.
Though she, too, has avoided public name-calling, it’s clear Pelosi doesn’t feel the same admiration for Trump. After a recent meeting at the White House, Pelosi returned to the Hill and questioned his manhood before a room full of House Democrats. She likened negotiating with him to getting sprayed by a skunk, and expressed exasperation that he is even president.
Pelosi’s allies say she doesn’t trust him, pointing to
- a tentative immigration compromise they reached in 2017 that she believes Trump backed out of. She’s noticed how
- he’s blamed Republican congressional leaders when his base decries spending bills, and
- upended their legislative plans with surprise tweets.
“Speaker Pelosi has a history of bipartisan accomplishments. … But the test for this president is figuring where he stands on issues from one day to the next,” said Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi’s former chief of staff.
Pelosi is also uncomfortable with Trump’s handling of facts — a big obstacle, in her mind, to cutting deals with him — and has occasionally called him out. During their first meeting after his inauguration, when Trump opened the gathering by bragging that he’d won more votes than Hillary Clinton, Pelosi was the only person in the room to correct him, noting that his statement was false and he’d lost the popular vote.
Since then, Pelosi has tried to correct Trump privately, her allies say. She doesn’t like fighting in public, they added, and it was one of the main reasons she tried, in vain, to end the sparring match over border wall funding that unfolded on TV live from the West Wing last month.
Sources close to Pelosi say she’s willing to work with Trump despite her party’s total rejection of him. Her confidants note that when Pelosi first became speaker in 2007, some Democrats were calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush over the invasion in Iraq. Pelosi ignored them and went on to strike major deals with Bush, including a bank bailout and stimulus package in response to the 2008 financial meltdown.
“They became friends,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a Pelosi confidant. For the incoming speaker, “It’s always about: Can you get things done? There are always going to be different points of view. How do we overcome them to get to a conclusion?”
Pelosi allies say as long as Trump is willing to compromise on Democratic priorities, she’ll work with him, too. But with the shutdown dragging into Pelosi’s takeover on Jan. 3, there’s a serious question about whether the two can make any headway.
On New Year’s Day, Trump and Pelosi exchanged words on Twitter over the shutdown — relatively mild ones, especially by Trump’s standards — in a sign of the tense days and weeks ahead.
“I think the president respects her and wants to work with her … Their personalities would lend themselves to strike deals,” Short said. “But I don’t know if Democrats will allow it. … She’s going to have so many members who will object to any transaction or communication with the president, that it puts her in a tight spot.”
It’s just as unclear whether Trump is willing to risk the wrath of his base by compromising with Pelosi. Just as he did on immigration, promising a “bill of love” to protect Dreamers from deportation, Trump privately told Pelosi after their contentious televised negotiation session that he wants to make a deal with her. Even after news that she’d questioned his masculinity went viral, he called her that afternoon to reiterate: We can work together to avert a shutdown.
But that was more than three weeks ago. The two haven’t spoken since.
The Phony Shutdown War
Trump and Democrats put political symbolism over policy substance.
A quarter of the federal government has shut down, and most of America doesn’t care. There’s wisdom in that response because this showdown over spending, the third this year, is a mostly symbolic political exercise that won’t make much difference no matter who wins.
President Trump wants $5 billion for security at the Mexican border, while Democrats are offering no more than $1.6 billion. Mr. Trump wants to be able to say he won the money for the “wall” he campaigned on, while Democrats don’t want to give him that victory so they say their money can only be spent on “border security.”
This is the tyranny of small differences, and neither choice will solve our national immigration dilemmas. A physical barrier has worked in some places like San Diego. But migrants then look for other illegal entry points. Building the wall across the entire 1,954-mile border would be expensive and it wouldn’t stop illegal immigration since most illegals arrive by overstaying their legal visas.
The best solution, as ever, is to reduce the incentive for people to come illegally by creating more ways to work legally in America. Most migrants come to work, and at the current moment there are plenty of unfilled jobs for them. A guest-worker program would let migrants move back and forth legally, ebbing and flowing based on employer needs, while reducing the ability of gangs and smuggler “coyotes” to exploit vulnerable migrants.
.. Democratic leaders want to show their base how tough they are for standing up to Mr. Trump, even if it means hanging the Dreamers out to dry. The left never wants any immigration compromise because it wants the election issue.Mr. Trump can’t decide what he really wants and seems to have no political strategy for achieving whatever it is.
- First he surprised everyone by taking public ownership of a possible shutdown in a meeting in the Oval Office with Democratic leaders.
- Then he agreed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal to fund the government for two months to move the funding debate into the new year when Democrats run the House.
- Then the House GOP Freedom Caucus and talk-radio hosts stomped their feet, and Mr. Trump flipped back to welcoming a shutdown and tweeting that “it could be a long stay.”
To what end? Mr. Trump’s shutdown tactic is to hold his breath until the other side gives in. This didn’t work for Newt Gingrich in 1995, though at least Newt was battling Bill Clinton over major reforms in the entitlement state. Mr. Trump is holding his breath over a mere $3.4 billion in spending for a piece of political symbolism.
The Freedom Caucus has long argued that Republicans can win a shutdown standoff if they hold their breath long enough. Perhaps Mr. Trump will try that, and at least we’d get a political market test of which party suffers most as the standoff continues. Yet if it ends with the two sides compromising on something like $3 billion in border funding, Americans can be forgiven for thinking the whole thing was a pointless political farce.
Fox News demanded a government shutdown — and got one
A lot of conservatives with big platforms were very, very angry at Trump this week.
If the government shuts down tonight over President Donald Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a border wall, feel free to blame conservative punditry.
This week Ann Coulter described Trump as a gutless “sociopath” who, without a border wall, “will just have been a joke presidency who scammed the American people.”
Radio host Rush Limbaugh said on his show Wednesday that without the $5 billion, any signing of a budget stop gap would show “Trump gets nothing and the Democrats get everything.”
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy said that without wall funding, “the swamp wins,” adding that Trump will “look like a loser” without wall funding and stating, “This is worth shutting down” the government.
There’s no way around it: A lot of people on the right are very upset with Trump (and each other) right now. And they’re taking it out on the president — on his favorite television network, on talk radio, on podcasts, and online — and it’s worked to put the pressure on him. Trump has abruptly changed course to demand $5 billion for a border wall (a demand the Senate isn’t likely to give in to). And now the government is facing a “very long” shutdown.
In the words of Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), referring to Coulter and Limbaugh, “We have two talk-radio show hosts who basically influenced the president, and we’re in a shutdown mode. It’s just—that’s tyranny, isn’t it?”
.. Republican voters are still solidly behind Trump (his approval rating among Republicans polled by Gallup is at 86 percent). But unlike some portions of Trump’s base, the voices of the party who supported Trump because of what he could do as president rather than who he is as president are deeply displeased with him.
Some on the right are upset about the administration’s decision to pull out of Syria and, perhaps, Afghanistan — and are very worried by news of James Mattis’s resignation from his role as defense secretary.