I’m opening this thread mainly because it seems strange to be debating this topic in a thread about the recent shutdown.
I’m thinking it gets passed, with funding for the wall (in some way, shape or form) and no path to citizenship. I think the latter will be a sticking point in the House, but I could be wrong about that.
I’ll be glad to see the matter debated in the Congress. That is where immigration matters belong.
There will be battles about who are the eligible persons (brought to US while under age X) and how much of an immigration benefit they might receive (type of visa or green card, path to citizenship, etc). And no matter, the chosen limits will be somewhat arbitrary.
I think there will be an attempt to hold out for no path to citizenship but that will crumble. I expect that application fees attached to DACA will be higher than typical immigration fees and Congress will pin a requirement to show income taxes were paid. Beyond that it will be the typical immigration paperwork, which might be a bit easier in a way since many of these applicants will be able to source supporting documents from US sources. It will take several months in total, but there will be new green card holders soon. Give it a few years beyond that for citizenship, so not in time for 2020 elections.
Political questions aside, it would be a non-starter for the Democrats to demand citizenship before 2020. If there is citizenship, I suspect it will be: Get in line like everyone else and just be glad we’re not making you leave the country in the interim. In any case, 5 years, minimum.
Best guess is that it doesn’t pass. I think the Senate can be that disciplined but that the House Freedom Caucus does one of its line-in-the-sand deals.
If the Democrats support it, are there enough FCs to stop it?
Ryan seems determined to not pass anything not support by an overwhelming majority of his caucus. That’s a significant barrier to getting anything through with D votes.
The Senate will pass something. McConnell will keep his promise, if only to prevent giving Democrats justification for another shutdown.
The House will refuse to vote. Paul Ryan has a three part analysis he does before allowing matters to come to a vote:
1- Does it cut taxes for the rich?
2- Does it undermine Social Security?
3- Does it chip away at Medicare/Medicaid?
If the answer to all of these is no, he’ll let it die on the vine.
The only way DACA passes is for Dems to get control of both houses. House Republicans know that if they pass something, they’ll get primaried. If you’re a Republican House member and you aren’t a racist yourself, you better coddle the racists else you’ll be primaried by someone who is.
Typically a person must attain LPR status (green card) and live in the United States for 5 years before qualifying to apply for naturalization.
The biggest exemption to the 5 years residency requirement is for those who obtain LPR status by marrying a US citizen. I think it would be a hard push for Congress to let DACA recipients gain citizenship after 2 years additional residency.
Steve Scalise said there’s no guarantee the House will take up whatever the Senate may pass
Anything the GOP will pass has to be sufficiently punitive and debasing for their voter constituencies to agree to, and it’s hard to calibrate just where the bottom of that pit lies. They haven’t had to pay a price (yet) for acting on bigotry in any other arena, and they won’t come out of the howling madness just for this.
So, let them take a tough-guys image into the election, while they let their hate be used against them, and it will be up to the new Democratic Congress to fix the damage. On this and a great deal of other things, too, of course; ACA funding stability being paramount.
The Democrats need to develop some messaging competence for once and pound the drumbeat: “The Republicans promised to take care of DACA. We look forward to working with them to keep that promise.”
It might sound cynical to the people who paid enough attention to notice Yertle Turtle’s actual loophole-ridden weasel wording. Those people can hold a meeting in a phone booth with enough room left over for Clark Kent to change while the Teeming Millions who are vaguely aware that “the Republicans offered a deal to get the Democrats to open the government again” absorb this framing of the issue. If it works (see above re Democrats developing some messaging skills), it’ll put the GOP in a tough bind.
I am afraid that the other DACA - Deplorables Against Children in America - will prevail.
The nattering nabobs of nativism.
Enabled by the pusillanimous pussyfooters.
The querulous Quakers of quantum quackery!
The details related to the DACA recipients are complicated enough - how long until (if ever) citizenship, what benefits they can receive as PR’s, etc… and then there are the larger questions - the DV lottery, family migration, the wall.
February 8th does not seem far away.
Not gonna happen until 2019, by which point a substantial portion of Dreamers will be gone. Tell me about that ‘bill of love,’ Donny. On the other hand, don’t bother. I wouldn’t trust a word you say anyway.
I’ll bet the Turtle was on the phone with Ryan 30 seconds after the shutdown ended asking him not to support any DACA bill.
The Republicans seized on the shutdown to accuse Democrats of complicity in any murders committed by any undocumented person. These boys will play hardball. They only way that DACA gets passed is with a Democratic Congress. You know damn well that before McConnell promised a vote, he was assured by Ryan that it would be in vain.
Interesting. The “84% of Americans support DACA” statistic gets trotted out a lot. Yet the Trump base is consistently pinned at around 32%. That means that at least half of Trump’s supposedly racist base supports DACA, and Trump has shown signs of sympathy for Dreamers. Yet a DACA solution won’t happen without a Democrat control because racism?
There will be a DACA bill brought forward in the Senate, it will be the ridiculous one by Cotton and Goodlatte. It will probably be changed into something that at least approaches being reasonable and pass with exactly 60 votes. Trump and the freedom caucus will reject it out of hand, Democrats will refuse to take up another CR until it passes and we are back where we started. Except this time the GOP has no children to hold hostage and nothing but their unpopular wall to fight for.