U.S. Gov faces shutdown with DACA as bargaining chip

With the Friday night deadline looming over Congress, and the spectre that the U.S. government would effectively shutdown -- except for essential services -- looms largely as the lights burn late in Capitol Hill offices. Part and parcel of a permanent spending bill hangs on the slender threads of an agreement for the DACA kids, as they are known in some quarters, but in reality, young adults who came to this country as toddlers and most have attained education, and jobs, and nearly one-quarter have earned college degrees, despite not having access to the federal school loan programs. 

As a rider to the spending bill their fate also faces great political and even moral dilemmas for those that are deciding, mostly Democrats, whether they should vote for a bill that keeps the government open, and leaves no decision for the DACA kids, or includes them, but risks the inclusion of the president’s demands to build a wall at the southern border with Mexico. 

The wall notwithstanding, the White House also wants increased border security, an end to previous programs that extended immigration though lottery programs, that also included relatives, what the president refers to as chain migration, noted the Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shai in an interview with Chris Cuomo on his CNN program, "The President has been pretty clear about what it will take to get us to the next phase," he said, speaking on "Cuomo Prime Time." This week White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, said that a continuous wall across thousands of miles would prove impossible and that Trump was misinformed. 

The Administration also is asking for $18 billion in funding versus the $1.6 billion that is being proffered by the bipartisan proposal form by Sens. Lindsay Graham and Dick Durbin, of South Carolina and Illinois. Thursday saw the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, an evangelical minister throw his support toHouse Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for her continued support for these young people. Rodriguez who offered prayer at President Trump's inauguration, gave this unexpected show of support based on the needs of the 800,000 affected. "You have always taken the lead. Your commitment to the immigrant community to the 'Dreamers' is second to none. So America is in a better place because of your prophetic leadership on this matter," he said at a news conference Thursday. The fate of those who fall under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals who could be deported to countries that they know little of, could happen sooner rather than later, but also face the near Byzantine machinations of the Trump administration, who has also asked that the Supreme Court of the United States, hear the DACA case, even as it is still in the circuit court, a previously unknown precedent,(called petition for certiorari in advance of judgement). 

This might allow the White House to circumvent a recent ruling, “issued last week by Judge William Alsup, ordering the administration to resurrect part of the DACA program and allow the 690,000 young unauthorized immigrants protected from deportation under the program when the Trump administration started shutting it down in October to apply for renewals of their two-year work permits,” reported vox.com.. 

The Administration in its own manner gave three conditions for revealing applications, at an individual cost of $495 dollars, before the March 5, 2018 deadline, of no renewals. As Vox said: “It took the administration less than five days to announce that it would begin to accept renewal applications for three broad categories of people who had already received DACA

● Immigrants whose work permits were set to expire after March 5, 2018 (who previously had been barred from renewing) 

● The 22,000 immigrants whose work permits expired (or are about to expire) between September 5 and March 5, who didn’t get the chance to renew in the narrow window DHS created in September 

● Immigrants whose work permits had already expired in the year before Trump wound down the program.” In this sense the Trump White House gave a partial restoration, that belies what the GOP called President Obama’s unconstitutional move, giving credence to the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows. 

Judicial reality has shown that the earliest time that the case could be taken up is during the Court’s new term in October, and that a ruling might not come until June, at the earliest. On the presidential campaign Trump was not supportive of DACA, but then as president, we have been told that he has wrestled with the dilemma of the DACA youth, and wanted to be fair, yet his actions belie that narrative, as he has held firm to his base, and their mantra of “build the wall,” amid the chants of “USA! USA!” hovering in the background like a movie score. 

With the DACA fate as a bargaining chip, Trump, fresh from his only legislative victory with the tax reform bill is flexing his muscles to try and fulfill a campaign promise to satisfy them, and the agenda of division that he heralded on the trail, which has the support of such conservative personalities such as Dr. Laura Ingraham who has been quoted as saying: “The No. 1 reason I voted for him was for the immigration. I want the wall. I want it to be seen in space like the Chinese wall.” 

The issue which has for many become a cause celebre, like Ingraham, has a large racial component against Mexicans, but in fact, the reality is far different than the fears that are played upn. For all of the fear, the actual illegal immigration on the southern border has actually decreased from its peak in 2009, and went lower in 2015, as has the influx of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center, who concluded that, “There were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2015, a small but statistically significant decline from the Center’s estimate of 11.3 million for 2009.” 

It’s going to get a lot rougher and the number one question is whether, the Dems can win playing by the rules; will Trump score a legislative victory by triangulation, that is by working with the Democrats, or will his base, fueled by the thundering, and condemning rhetoric of Ingraham and the redoubtable Ann Coulter, who in a Twitter rant, said, “At this point, who DOESN’T want Trump impeached,” survive unscathed, even in office. 

For the Dems, they face being blamed for a government shutdown, rather than Trump, yet there is another play that they could make, and that is let the government shutdown in the absence of either a temporary, or permanent fix; stand on the morality of the DACA issue and hope. But, that play may not be for the best, and some say, putting all of their political capital in one basket when they could play a stronger hand in March might be the better option. 

That could be gamble for the political gap between now and then, say other observers John Cassidy writing for The New Yorker, also on Thursday, noted that “The racist comments that President Trump made in the Oval Office last week have inflamed things further, and many Democratic activists are demanding that Schumer and other elected Democrats vote against the G.O.P. spending bill even at the risk of a government shutdown, which could happen as soon as this weekend. On Wednesday, three protesters from the Dream Action Coalition, a group that advocates for the undocumented, were arrested while demonstrating outside Schumer’s office in New York City, and there were more protests in Washington.” 

The stakes are at their highest, and the emotions that have boiled over can make this issue galvanize into even more, now, and certainly into the 2018 midterm elections, and if the Democrats capitalize on the “shithole” adjectives that the president used, they might have a chance, if only in the court of public opinion.