If the goal was to entice undeserving applicants, you couldn’t design a worse combination of policy and resources. In comparison, the bipartisan proposal is designed to deny more cases at the initial stage and get final decisions on all cases in a matter of months.

For immigration hardliners, the moment of leverage had finally arrived: More enforcement without amnesty. However, instead of seizing this likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, House Republicans and former President Trump argued that the bill was not the hardliner wish list they preferred and successfully convinced most Senate Republicans to block the bill.

This one-sided deal that favors Republican enforcement policy is unlikely to ever reappear. There has never been another moment this century when Democrats agreed to enforcement legislation without meaningful legalization provisions. Nor have they ever agreed to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to anywhere near the level needed to locate and deport millions of individuals already in the country illegally.

  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    469 months ago

    This is exactly what I thought about abortion rights but they really went and plowed ahead on that.

    Now they’ve shifted the culture wars over to trans rights and whatever other kinds of bigotry they can muster up. There’s really no bottom to the depths of horribleness that they’re willing to plumb.

    • @TheDoozer
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      299 months ago

      And the abortion rights thing bit them in the ass, because it galvanized a lot of voters.

      I think that dog catching the car moment hit home, and they won’t let it happen again.

      • @[email protected]
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        fedilink
        29 months ago

        Part of the problem was it was unexpected, and it shows. If Republicans could have decided, they definitely wouldn’t have had it passed for the reasons that you have indicated.

    • @[email protected]
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      fedilink
      129 months ago

      important distinction that it wasn’t the legislature that repealed abortion rights. it was a couple of true believers, unconcerned about reelection, that the party cheated the system to get them onto the supreme court. if they’d known their nominees were lying about their stances on roe, i doubt they’d have been confirmed.