{"id":21930,"date":"2019-09-16T14:08:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T18:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21930"},"modified":"2019-09-16T14:08:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T18:08:42","slug":"democrats-candidates-border-security-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/09\/16\/democrats-candidates-border-security-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Misguided Lesser of Two Evils Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In last week\u2019s televised debate, the top Democratic presidential candidates had a lot to say<\/a> about how they saw President Trump and his immigration policies being racist, cruel and not representative of the American people. They spoke in the language of political platitudes about the benefits of immigration and the benefits they would give legal and illegal immigrants. But not one single word about how they would enforce the law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their silence was not by accident. The tactical decision to stick to drawing caricatures of the president and avoid coloring inside the policy lines with specifics. As the New York Times<\/a> even recognized, Democrats \u201chave spent most of their efforts on dismantling the Trump administration\u2019s policies, without really laying out how, if elected, they would handle illegal border crossings, eliminate a growing immigration court backlog, direct immigration enforcement or address the root causes of migration from Central America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Chris Newman, the legal director for the pro-immigrant rights National Day Laborer Organizing Network, put in less-diplomatic terms, telling the Times<\/a> on the eve of the debate that the goal of Democrats \u201cis to make white women in the suburbs cry about Trump\u2019s treatment of migrants and then pivot to health care.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Trump has prevented them from issue-shifting, Newman predicts Democrats will adopt \u201ca lesser-of-two-evils strategy as they have been for many years\u201d when it comes to the general election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem for any\nDemocrat who adopts this strategy is that it is their policies, may not be seen\nas the lesser of two evils, according to some former Obama administration\nofficials. When they step off the stage and stop posturing with platitudes and\npot-shots at Trump, their amnesty first policies do not resonate with mainstream\nAmericans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview over\nthe weekend, former Obama attorney general Eric Holder dismissed the idea\nproposed by presidential candidate Julian Castro to decriminalize illegal\nimmigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDemocrats have to understand that … borders do mean something,” said Holder while being interviewed by former Obama adviser David Axelrod on CNN.<\/a> <\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holder went on to note\nthat the law making unauthorized border crossing illegal is a \u201claw that\u2019s been on\nthe books has been there for about 100 years now or so.\u201d For good reason. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt might send the\nwrong signal, but it would certainly take a tool away from the Justice\nDepartment that it might want to use for an individual case and for some\nreason,\u201d added Holder, who has been a fierce critic of the Trump\nadministration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former Obama Homeland\nSecurity Department Secretary Jeh Johnson also argued that \u201ctalk\nabout deprioritizing the deportation of those apprehended at\nthe border or decriminalizing illegal immigration\u201d is \u201cgoing way too\nfar to the left of the American consensus on where [Democrats] should\nbe on this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that if illegal immigration is decriminalized that would put U.S. Border Patrol agents in an \u201cimpossible\u201d situation of essentially telling those they arrest that \u201cyou\u00a0get to stay here unless you\u00a0commit a crime.\u201d That, Johnson said during an appearance on MSNBC\u2019s Morning Joe<\/a> on Wednesday, which \u201csimply incentivizes more illegal immigration\u201d and would result in losing control of our borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook, most Americans want to be fair and treated in a humane way,\u201d but will see a formal move toward decriminalization \u2018en masse\u2019 is not where the American people are,\u201d he concluded. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In last week\u2019s televised debate, the top Democratic presidential candidates had a lot to say about how they saw President Trump and his immigration policies being racist, cruel and not representative of the American people. They spoke in the language of political platitudes about the benefits of immigration and the benefits they would give legal<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":14851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[140,4272,1524,400],"yst_prominent_words":[1938,3740,2235,2043,2304,3274,3921,6532,6533,2013,2011,1963,2030,3788,1994,6536,2771,1942,4006,1946],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21931,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21930\/revisions\/21931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21930"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}