It’s true, DACA and Refugees are now Hostages for Life.
As a prelude, Trump has reduced the sacred swearing in and commitments of citizenship to a political and partisan act. Trump himself bragged about this as the first time that a President had done this in the White House.
There are already barriers along the whole part of the border which is not marked by the steep canyons and wide Rio Grande River, which is the Southern border of Texas.
Almost 90% of the four or five harmful drugs that Trump listed come through the ports of entry, and don’t need an enhanced wall to stop them, especially one with slats in it. My guess is the “high priority positions” will be next to ports of entries, where the “beautiful wall” can be seen by all voters.
The start of Trump’s talk were actually the Democrat’s proposals for more drug detectors at the ports of entries, more immigration judges to speed access of the long backlog, more border agents, and admission of asylum seekers while they wait for their hearings. Trump listed these with no indication that they are the Democrat’s much less expensive proposals.
It’s weird that Trump had his family working overnight to put this together. I could have put together this already rejected proposal in 5 minutes, without the lies, though.
The very sad part, though, is that Trump is holding the 700,000 registered DACA child DREAMERS (really 1.8 to 2 million of such DREAMERS) hostage until they will become unprotected again in three years, when Trump can again use them as his bargaining chip. Since Trump may be kaputz in two years, this is probably a year more than is needed. This also applies to 300,000 here under Temporary Protected Status as refugees, including those from the destructive earthquake in Haiti. On Sunday, Trump said that this does not include amnesty, but he would withhold that for another negotiation. I wonder what Martin Luther King would say about that, or Abraham Lincoln.
Always a numbers guy, lets look at them in detail. The claim that $700 billion is lost annually on drugs medically also includes the effects of drinking and smoking. So no relevance to the wall yet. The 78,000 was it that is now dying yearly from opioids or maybe drugs grouped together, includes prescription abuse, China, and a lack of effective Trump programs to halt these.
Only today we learned that The Wall is a metal picket fence, for sure? We don’t think there has been any competitive bidding on it, which is hard, when you don’t know exactly where it is going, or what its dimensions and materials are. Yet the expert deal maker Trump has already priced it to within 2% as precisely costing $5.7 billion. And that will cover precisely 230 miles, apparently to within ± 5 miles, or to an accuracy of 2% also. Not much of a deal maker if you give out a precise price without a single bid. Or did they violate procurement rules by getting a single bid without competitive bidding? And what was the extra cost for beautifying it? And has the land already been procured, or will it be held up for 13 years in the courts as the last eminent domain wall building cases have been?
My guess is that there is a lot of Wall Dreaming in the administration as well.
