Since President Trump announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last September, Democrats and amnesty advocates have maintained the urgent need to find a final resolution to the status of DACA beneficiaries.
In response to the administration’s proposal to spend $18 for the construction of a border wall, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) inferred that the idea itself was enough to cause a government shutdown.
“President Trump has said he may need a good government shutdown to get his wall. With this demand, he seems to be heading in that direction. I’ve been clear from the beginning that Senate Democrats will consider reasonable border security measures in order to pass the Dream Act into law,” he said in a statement last week.
However, the reality does not match Durbin’s rhetoric.
For almost a year, Democrats have shown an unwillingness to negotiate on any measure to reform the legal immigration system or enhance the security of the nation’s borders.
As the April 28 deadline to fund the government for the remainder of FY 2017 loomed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer penned a letter to Senate Republicans warning of a possible shutdown if funding for a wall were included in a government spending measure, according to Politico.
Schumer, however, was one of 80 U.S. Senators (including then-Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton) to vote in support a bill that authorized 700 miles of fencing on our southern border.
On the House side, the expressed opposition took a more dramatic tone.
“He did not promise that he would take food out of the mouths of babies and seniors and education, clean air, clean water, scientific research off the table in a significant way in order for him to pay for his immoral, ineffective, unwise proposal of a wall,” lamented House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California.
The government remained open, but Democrats remained closed down to the prospect of securing the future of the DACA beneficiaries in exchange for stronger enforcement and sensible reforms to legal immigration.
In the weeks before Obama‘s policy memo creating DACA was rescinded, congressional Democrats again were signaling their refusal to negotiate on immigration.
Democrats proclaimed they would not trade “protection” of DACA beneficiaries for an administration proposal to increase border security, reduce overall immigration levels and make E-Verify mandatory for employers.
“Dreamers are not a bargaining chip for the border wall and inhumane deportation. Period,” tweeted Schumer
Pelosi also weighed in on Twitter, saying it was “reprehensible to treat children as bargaining chips,” and that “Dreamers are not negotiable.”
Pelosi, Durbin and Schumer may be willing to throw the baby out with the bath water, but at least one Democrat acknowledges that his party will need to accept trade-offs that are supported by most Americans.
Former Maryland Governor and former presidential hopeful Martin O’Malley, while not in support of making permanent status for DACA beneficiaries contingent upon enforcement provisions, is at least willing to accept them as a necessary condition. “I think that’s a morally-defensible trade-off,” said O’Malley.
10 Comments
I hope they stay not willing to negotiate so that DACA will lose. Because the wall IS GOING TO BE BUILT!
Arrest illegal alien criminal usurper Barack Obama aka Barry Soetoro, the Marxist Muslim infiltrator jihadist attacking USA.
No Amnesty, Period! Washington cannot be trusted with any kind of amnesty, if you look back at the amnesty of 1986 we were to receive better interior enforcement and secure borders, the illegal immigrants received their amnesty and our Citizens received another ten to twenty million illegal immigrants. Our Citizens also need to look at our jail and prison population and see the number of illegal immigrants incarcerated which cost our Citizens over $30 Thousand per year per inmate! How many of our Citizens would like to have $30 Thousand per year to live on? Also think of the crimes they have committed against our own Citizens, if they were not here they could not commit other crimes!
Democrats just want to get those voters. They do not care about our security and economy. Thanks God we have Trump in WH.
Already a law on the books saying that the wall will be built. Dems threw that ‘crumb’ to President Reagan to get amnesty for, then, about 3 million illegals (undocumented Democrat voters). As soon as they possibly could, Democrats pulled funding for the wall and ever since then, subsequent Congressional sessions have refused to authorize that funding………….
The people against the Wall are not living close to Mexican borders. Obama’s agenda was to take over our COUNTRY, we have no idea how many TERRORS AR in country. We need the wall to protect our COUNTRY.
So the Democrats insist on depriving 325 million of LEGAL US citizens of their government services over the dubious agenda of less than a million of DACA individuals entering our country ILLEGALLY! Where is the rational? Am I to understand that the US is now the designated destination for every hungry/unhappy mouth south of the border? Since Pelosi and Schumer don’t understand that the interests and care of US citizens must ALWAYS come first, it’s time for them to be replaced by REAL patriots committed first and foremost to the citizens of the US!
I hereby declare “***********” on Democrats and RINOs.
Those opposed to the wall complete with underground sensors are simply out of touch with reality and have little love for the USA has been for so long. To put their political views ahead of the well being of their very own constituents is appauling. Hopefully that wall will be going up soon in the area of the San Ysidro(San Diego) entry, down the road a piece at Otay Mesa, and then to the worst of all borders of Arizona where RINO McCain has looked the other way. I have held zero respect for McCain for eons, and it’s due to the porous 180 square miles of Arizona border that has been a sieve for bad people to gain access to our country.
No DACA. Executive order. Build the wall.