Trump’s Wall of Caca, and DACA

First he lied that Mexico would pay for it. Now he wants $25 billion from U.S. taxpayers as a down-payment on his border wall.

The other night on TV I saw a row of different prototype wall segments. Here’s my sequence of thoughts:

While some Mexicans may try it unaided, illicit border crossing is not generally a DIY project. Most utilize “coyotes” who guide them, charging thousands of dollars. Making it a serious business. If you were in that business, how would you overcome a wall?

Forget tunneling — too big a project. But how about a cherrypicker — like power companies use to hoist up workers for tree-trimming? Could easily be modified to also lower migrants down on the other side. Of course this would be done under cover of darkness. How hard would it be? (A high-tech wall might have sensors to detect such activity; but birds would probably screw them up.)
Or how about a mini-helicopter — or simple small airplane? Flights would take only minutes; landing in the desert, and taking off again, would be a snap.

Or how about this cheap low-tech solution: a ladder. Lightweight, foldable, re-usable. How hard would that be?

That was about twelve seconds of thought. Is Trump capable of twelve consecutive seconds of thought? Will we spend $25 billion for something that can be foiled by a ladder? Or is this all just a cynical pander to his racist supporters for whom a wall is a powerful symbol — but who haven’t the brains to think of a ladder? (Itself a powerful symbol.)

DACA is the program allowing people brought here as children, unlawfully — the “dreamers” — to stay. Most are students or employed, contributing members of society. Polls show overwhelming majorities (even among Trump voters) think it would be cruel and dumb to end DACA.

In September, when Trump cancelled DACA and said he hoped Congress would restore it, I called that a lie* — the 1,578th of the 2,140 in his first presidential year (literally, according to a Washington Post compilation). Trump and the Grand Old White Folks Party are holding the dreamers as hostages. Democrats should not have played their game by linking DACA to the government shutdown. In the end they were forced to vote to end the shutdown merely in exchange for a worthless promise of DACA action, on which Trump predictably reneged. Now he offers DACA only for a further price: $25 billion for his wall, and a huge change in immigration policy, limiting family reunification only to spouses and underage children, which would ultimately cut legal immigration almost in half. This is the aim of racist Republican immigrant-haters.

These are terrible ideas; our economy actually needs more immigrants. These Trump immigration proposals should not, and never could, pass on their own. Democrats should refuse bundling them with DACA, and answer: if you’re sincere about DACA, then let’s vote on a DACA bill alone, which would pass; otherwise, DACA’s demise will be your criminal responsibility.

I believe in legislative compromise, and Heaven knows we suffer from a dearth of it. But Trump’s proposal isn’t honorable compromise, it’s extortion and blackmail. The ransom demanded for release of the dreamer hostages is way too high.

* Trump hates DACA for two reasons. First, it was Obama’s doing, and spite against Obama is a chief animus of his presidency. Second, most beneficiaries are (like Obama) brown-skinned.

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