The standoff

Trump’s base hates DACA. The polls give a confused picture with much Republican ambivalence until one gets to Ann Coulter and Stephen Miller. Trump wants to keep the DACA people hostage, and the Dems in Congress will not agree to a wall unless the entire DACA community gets permanent protection. The entire DACA eligible community is about 2 million, far more than the roughly 700,000 already enrolled, and permanent protection downstream entails tricky situations where the normalized DACA people seek legal status for their unauthorized parents.

If this sound like an explosion in the making it is. But Trump does not want a comprehensive solution to immigration and certainly not a national commission to come up with solutions, because it removes the issue from his control.

A national commission would take into account security, e-Verify, legal immigrant targets, temporary visas, etc. and last beyond 2020, and would probably involve suspension of the Trump Administration’s administrative changes such as “public charge” criteria for awarding green cards.

The key is if a bipartisan solution can be found in the Senate.


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