Globalists still winning on immigration, on all fronts

Time for another reality check on monthly immigration data and trends, with greater importance now that the DACA program is heading toward definitive action soon.

First, remember from this earlier post that we will be able to tell which side in the immigration battle is winning based on the immigrant group who first receives collective treatment from the government.

There are 20 million illegals -- too many to deal with individually, who must be dealt with as groups. Globalists seek to amnesty and citizenize all groups of illegals, nationalists to deport all groups of illegals. But constraints make each side rank immigrant groups from highest priority to lowest priority. Because the battle is public, each side chooses its most sympathetic and winnable cases first, its least sympathetic cases last.

The two extreme groups are the DACA people, who were brought into the country illegally as children, who bear little blame for being here illegally, and serious criminals, who chose to invade the country illegally and on top of that are a public menace.

The globalist ranking is to amnesty and citizenize the DACA people first, and serious criminals last. The nationalist ranking is the opposite: deport the criminals first, and DACA people last.

Criminals are not being deported as an entire class, only here-and-there as individuals, perhaps at a higher rate than under Obama, but not collectively.

The DACA people are going to get collective treatment soon, and it is going to be amnesty and citizenship rather than deportation. Although Trump may end the DACA program per se, he will not be deporting the "Dreamers". Rather, the political process by which they are amnestied and given citizenship will shift from an over-reach executive action given by Obama (DACA), and toward a normal legislative bill by Congress and signed by the President that will be upheld by the Supreme Court.

Globalist Republicans in Congress are already crafting the legislation (see here and here). That will allow the globalists to win the first major battle on immigration (they already won the first minor battle by neutering the Muslim ban), while letting Trump save face in a loss for the nationalists by nominally "ending DACA" (while still giving them amnesty and citizenship rather than putting them in line for deportation, let alone actually deporting them).

Moving on to The Wall, the prototype stage is still delayed from summer until winter, and the globalists running DHS are still allowing half of the proposals to be non-wall solutions. Always read past the headline: "The four companies [just announced] each proposed concrete walls. DHS expects to announce contracts for four non-concrete wall prototypes next week."

Sorry, but the non-wall solutions should have been killed at the beginning. We didn't chant "Build Anything Other Than a Wall!" at the Trump rallies. The fact that they are going to make it through the finals means it is more likely than not that one of these non-wall proposals will win, given who runs DHS, although that is not fait accompli just yet.

As for legal immigration levels, the globalists controlling the State Dept have kept them as high as they were under Obama, no change from the last report to that effect. The July numbers for immigrant and non-immigrant visas are well within the range of the other months of the Trump administration. Recall that the #1 source of illegal immigration these days is people who get a non-immigrant visa (say, as a tourist) and then over-stay the time allowed, residing and working here permanently.

The monthly average for immigrant visas is now 48K vs. 49K last time; for non-immigrant visas, it is now 836K vs. 826K last time. Extrapolating to 12 months at these levels (and there are only five months left to reverse course), we can expect 572K immigrant visas and 10 million non-immigrant visas during the first year of Trump. These estimates are basically unchanged from the last report.

Both of those estimates are still above most years of Obama. For immigrant visas, only 2016 saw higher numbers; for non-immigrant visas, only 2015 and '16. The decrease from last year is marginal.

Since an earlier post on deportations, there is still no evidence that they have shifted from at-the-border turn-aways to within-the-interior removals. And the total of the two remains lower than under Obama. Sanctuary cities still face no de-funding (one-half of one percent of their budget, under the Sessions plan). Still no collective action to punish employers for hiring illegals. If anything, I've noticed that the illegals working at McDonald's and Wendy's have come back within the past several months, after a brief disappearance during the early months of the Trump administration, before the Establishment hijacking in April.

The only area where there may be improvement is refugees. They have fallen by double-digit percentages, although they are not a major category of immigration to begin with (in the thousands per month, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands that are brought in under immigrant and non-immigrant visas). I would also not be surprised if the State Dept globalists are not simply playing a shell game, and giving would-be "refugees" one of the two larger kinds of visas (immigrant or non-immigrant).

We will keep our eyes peeled for solid evidence that nationalists are winning on any front of the immigration war, but this year has been one of losses. That could change next year, with the mid-term elections heating up for globalist Republicans who find themselves vulnerable in a climate of immigration restriction.

That seems to hold for other fronts in the Trump movement's war against the Establishment -- losing year when there's no election, winning year when there are elections. After all, the Trump movement has close to zero supporters throughout the entire government, and elections are one of the few ways that the citizenry outside of DC has to collectively influence policy.