Immigration Negotiations Have Gone Off the Deep End

Anik Rahman/NurPhoto via ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Let’s talk immigration for a bit. It’s gone completely cuckoo. I realize that this is all due to politics of various stripes, but let’s stop for a minute and look just at the policy.

It all started when President Trump killed DACA, the mini-DREAM executive order that allows individuals who were brought to the country at a young age to apply for work permits and protection from deportation. Trump revoked it because it was an Obama policy and he’s dedicated to destroying all things Obama, but he took care to delay the end of DACA for six months so that Congress would have time to reinstate it via legislation, something he said he favored.

That sounds simple enough. Democrats are more eager to restore DACA than Republicans, which means they needed to offer something in return. How about funding for Trump’s wall? Even among Republicans, a recent poll shows that 53 percent support DACA and 62 percent support a deal that includes both DACA and the wall. Then Democrats went further: they offered the wall plus preventing chain migration among the DREAMers by making their parents ineligible for citizenship plus an end to the visa lottery. But apparently that’s still not enough.

Which is crazy. This was never meant to be a deal for comprehensive immigration reform. It’s a narrow agreement to keep DACA in place, something that both Trump and many Republicans say they want to do anyway. The deal Democrats offered would be hugely popular among Republicans; it would give Trump a start on his wall; and it would prevent a government shutdown, which would probably be blamed on Republicans no matter how many manic tweets Trump sends out.

In other words, everyone has a strong incentive to ignore the hardliners and do this. Republicans like it. Democrats like it. It avoids a shutdown. Are the immigration hardliners really so powerful that they can kill off a deal that has practically everything going for it? Is Trump really so unnerved by a bit of mockery that the dealmaker-in-chief is going to let this deal sink? The whole thing is crazy.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate