No. of Recommendations: 7
HB2 has some really good provisions in it, so I don't accept the notion that it was a messaging bill.
Again, the fact that it has good provisions in it doesn't mean it wasn't a messaging bill. In fact, any properly done messaging bill should have good provisions in it. That's the point. You put in some good provisions, and then you put in provisions that the other side will never accept. That way you get them to vote against it, and you can tell your voters that they didn't want the good provisions.
The bill *was* terrible. Locking in 4,999 as a number before you're allowed to assert control over your own border is insane. To add insult to injury even the ability to close the border off sunsetted after a while. The bill sucked.
Why is it insane? Unless you're seeing numbers that exceed your capacity to process the asylee requests, there's no need to stop taking asylum requests. "Asserting control over your own border" doesn't require you international law by refusing to even consider a request for refugee status before sending people back to the home country they claim they're being persecuted, as a general matter. Only in specific and unusual circumstances would you ever need to do that.
The bill didn't suck - it gave immigration hawks more money for border control, tougher asylum criteria, more money for border walls, more money to expand detention facilities, removing asylum hearings from judges and giving it to administrative officials, and an opportunity to have never-before-seen periods where asylum applications couldn't even be filed. You've never had a better chance - and more one-sided - chance to solve the problem of all those folks waiting around for asylum hearings. And you couldn't take "yes" for an answer.
The democrats aren't going to convince ANYBODY that Trump is soft on border issues.
But it will be pretty easy to convince people that he's failed to solve them, when all those hundreds of thousands of asylees are still here. He won't have any authority to deport them. He won't have any money to detain them. He won't have the resources to speed up their processing. They'll still be here. And they'll still be coming, and he still won't be able to stop them.
That's what will put the Democrats in a much, much better position on this issue. Not that Trump will be perceived as "soft" on the border issues, but that he'll fail to solve the problems.
You don't get into a poker game to win one hand. You get into to it to win the pot.
Sure - but to win the pot (or win money in general), you have to play your hands. You have to be willing to actually win money when you can. The GOP had a chance to win a huge pot here. The largest we've seen on immigration for decades. And they folded instead.
