Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

The shutdown is intractable because Trump’s wall is ridiculous and Republicans know it

Conservatives won’t trade the wall for anything good because they know it’s a bad idea

By Matthew Yglesias on December 28, 2018 12:00 pm


Spending billions of dollars to build hundreds of miles of additional walling — or “steel slats” or wh**ever you want to call it — on the US-Mexico border is a bad idea. That’s a critical, underrated feature of the current standoff that has led President Trump to partially shut down the government.

After all, if the president of the United States wants a $5 billion appropriation for a pet project that’s important to him personally and partially fulfills a campaign promise, then he ought to be able to get it. And the time-honored way to get it is to give congressional skeptics something else in exchange. That’s how the system has worked ever since Alexander Hamilton got James Madison to back federal assumption of state debts in exchange for locating the nation’s capital on the banks of the Potomac River.

But back at the beginning of the year, when it seemed as though a compromise involving wall money and a path to citizenship for DREAMers was in the works, it was immigration hardliners in Trump’s own administration who scuttled the deal. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it underscores the core t***h of this standoff: Immigration hardliners themselves don’t think the wall is especially useful or important in the real world. If they really wanted a wall, they would go get a wall by offering something — it wouldn’t even necessarily have to be immigration-related — in exchange for it. But since they know the wall is a bad idea, they won’t trade it for anything.

Yet precisely because the wall idea is so bad, Democrats, rightly, aren’t going to give it away for free.

The wall is a very bad idea

Obviously there’s nothing silly about the general idea of walls to separate pieces of territory. But if you’ve ever been to the US-Mexico border, chances are you’ve seen that there’s already lots of wall there. Significant swaths of the border are made up of t***snational conurbations like San Diego-Tijuana or El Paso-Juarez, where, in the absence of imposing physical barriers, it would be very challenging for Border Patrol to stop people from sneaking across.

What’s left are desolate, uninhabited stretches of border where construction logistics are difficult, crossing is difficult, and the Border Patrol’s detection work is relatively easy.

Meanwhile, over the past 10 years, the rise of export-oriented manufacturing jobs in Mexico plus shifting Mexican demographics has greatly reduced the number of Mexicans who want to come to the United States to work illegally, while the rollout of the Real ID program has made it harder to work illegally. The combined result is that the size of the undocumented immigrant population is falling, driven almost entirely by a million fewer undocumented Mexican nationals living in the United States.

There remain many foreign-born people living illegally in the United States, but nearly two-thirds of them have been here for more than 10 years, and the Pew Research Center estimates that a majority of new unauthorized arrivals initially entered the United States with a valid visa rather than sneaking across a border.

The action at the border these days, in terms of immigration, is about asylum seekers, whole family units who arrive and either cross at legal ports of entry or else deliberately present themselves to Border Patrol after crossing illegally.

This is a legitimately difficult problem, but building extra miles of wall in the middle of nowhere won’t ameliorate it. With even the Trump administration finding itself dumping detained asylum seekers onto the streets of border towns due to a lack of capacity, it’s clear that if we’re going to invest huge new sums of money in the border, it should be to address this problem. More resources are needed to adjudicate asylum claims more rapidly, to secure people with pending claims in sustainable and humane ways, and to assist Central American countries in combating the underlying issues that drive people north.

Immigration hardliners know the wall is a bad idea

The tell here is that when congressional Democrats started getting close to a deal that would swap help for DREAMers for wall money, immigration hawks swooped in — not with quibbles about the details but with a huge set of unrelated demands.

As Dara Lind wrote in January, the White House’s proposed framework for a deal ultimately included “an overhaul of asylum laws, stepped-up interior enforcement, and a broad crackdown on legal immigration on the scale of the Trump-endorsed RAISE Act.” The RAISE Act is a plan to cut legal immigration levels in half, which illustrates how little immigration restrictionists are actually focused on the nominal border security debate that has shut the government down.

But that’s the point. If your goal is to reduce the number of foreign-born people living in the United States by any means necessary, then building an extra 700 miles of border wall is not particularly useful. So extending a path to citizenship for DREAMers or anyone else in exchange for a not-very-useful wall is an unattractive deal.

By the same token, if the wall were extremely useful, then Trump could seek to offset its cost by reducing spending on some other aspect of immigration enforcement. But because the wall is a bad idea, that would be a bad deal and he wouldn’t offer it. He also obviously can’t offer to offset the cost with higher taxes on the rich because that would blow up the Republican Party coalition — a coalition that’s happy to exploit the border wall issue for partisan gain but that at its core is supposed to be delivering money to rich people.

The art of the deal

A Washington Post editorial Friday morning argues that “the way out of the shutdown has been obvious for weeks,” touts the DREAMer-wall swap, scolds the White House for having scuttled it, and then for the sake of balance scolds Nancy Pelosi for having adopted the obvious negotiating tactic of saying she’s no longer interested in the deal.

The t***h, however, is that there’s nothing obvious about this.

It seems like a good deal precisely because a path to citizenship for DREAMers is a real, valuable thing that will make a big difference in people’s lives, while the wall is utterly foolish. If you take the anti-immigration position seriously, that makes it a terrible deal. They’d have traded away something real for a bit of political theater.

The true path forward would be the opposite of this — for the White House to admit that the wall is foolish and reopen the government. Then we could begin a legislative negotiation over the topics that are actually in dispute: internal enforcement, asylum law, the treatment of long-settled unauthorized migrants, and future flows of legal immigration. But the Trump administration can’t even admit publicly that Mexico isn’t going to pay for the wall, much less admit that the whole wall concept is essentially irrelevant to their immigration policy goals.

As long as that persists, it’s hard to find a way out.


https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/12/28/18158873/wall-shutdown-trump-dreamers-deal

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Apparently, these are other people's ideas and concepts and you apparently agree with them. So, what would you suggest as a means of protecting our borders?
--Bob

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

Well, the first step would be to recognize that the majority of “i******s” FLY into this country, then overstay work or education visas.

BigWahoo Loc: Kentucky

Real border security.

The technology exists but Trump has refused to spend the money congress provided in 2018 for border security.

Actual border security does not rally his base like yelling for a 'great big beautiful wall'.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Twardlow and BigWahoo, both of you provide good replies. If I'm not mistaken, wasn't there a push to solve the visa overstays a while back, perhaps even the last administration? Though, It would be nice to see some hard numbers regarding the number of visa violations vs. the number of "walk-ins".

Additionally, it would be prudent to do an assessment of the technology vs. the wall and see which works best. The only thing I can compare it with is a sturdy door vs a burglar alarm. The door would keep people out. The alarm (technology) tells you someone is already inside. The trick then is finding the person who broke in. In a building that may be easy. In the vast area of the border, not so easy. So, it may be that prevention is better.
--Bob

BigWahoo Loc: Kentucky

Any door can be broken.

Most drugs and other smuggled goods come through regulated border crossings.

There is technology that can be used to stop much more of this than is being used.

We have fences in places where they are needed that are in disrepair that are not being repaired. Trump doesn't want that to happen because he wants a 'great big beautiful wall' with his name on it.

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

He wants something big with his name on it to remind everyone how stupid they were to to elect him as president. If anything good comes out of it people will take a better look at the next p**********l wannabes.

Twardlow Loc: Arkansas

We have some experience, somewhat similar, with the drug program. Most experts estimate we stop about 10% of drugs attempting to enter the country—not too good.

Much of this comes in over the highway, passing through customs, etc.

Remember, all over the world, ‘immigrants’ float on boat-like devices for many miles—those attempting to come from Cuba float 90 miles or so. Sailing around the wall, wherever it ends, would be small turnips compared to 90 miles from Cuba.

The US has found many tunnels, some at least with electric lighting and air conditioning. We have no idea what percentage of existing tunnels we have discovered.

I’ve heard of drugs Bening flown in, under observation by radar, but they land, unload immediately and fly away before planes or police can arrive. I suppose you could do that with humans, though it would be expensive.

The only genuine solution to this problem is stability within the home country. These people are running for their lives, and taking a chance with US forces is a much better deal that random but common death from vicious gangs in the home country.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I agree with the "home" situation of the people wanting to come here. There has to be a way to improve their living conditions in their home countries. The problem isn't solved with throwing money at it. Too much of that ends in the hands of those in power and never gets to the ones who need it. However, we can't just go into a country and tell them how to run things. That would just never work. Additionally, it's also a lucritive business to be supplying drugs. Somehow our 'just say no" program didn't seem to work. We've made a lot of people rather wealthy as a result of the drug dealing business. How does one replace that industry with something else? That's an even bigger question.

It's good that we both see a problem, but what is the solution?
--Bob

LWW Loc: Banana Republic of America

That wasn’t an answer.

EyeSawYou

ole sarg Loc: south florida

We create well funded and manned entry points which issue dates asylum seekers are to appear in courts and plea their case. The data shows that people seeking asylum appear on the given time and date. We make becoming a citizen easier. We set up night schools that teach civics and english. You know just like we did from about 1880 to 1911 when we had to handle all those violent Scandinavians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Central Europeans, Greeks, etc. We are one of the few western countries that are not facing a declining population and entering a stagnant economy like Japan because of a lack of population. Read about the need for population growth to support a dynamic economy. We recovered from the last GOP depression because we had a growing population.

You should read books on political economy and demographics.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

Why don't you bone spur supporters just accept the fact that the current illegal resident of 1600 Pa. Ave is a liar who has no more idea of what he is saying than the man in the moon. He is on the way out either by resigning or by being held criminally liable for his many felonies. We have been taken for a ride, admit it and go on!!

Kraken Loc: Barry's Bay

They can't, they have drank too much of the kool-aide

John_F Loc: Minneapolis, MN

A machine gun nest every 50 yards ?