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Aug. 17, 2017 at 12:05 PM

Brace yourself, because we are about to ask you to read a story about a boring technological problem and its impact on government. Like many dull things, though, its also important a failure so pervasive that it costs taxpayers billions and has the power to bridge partisan divides, uniting Jared Kushner and congressional Republicans with congressional Democrats and Obama-appointed scientific experts. Despite those things, the problem remains so deeply unsexy that Kushner publicly speaking about it resulted mostly in headlines about what his voice sounded like.

Senior advisor Jared Kushner speaks during an event with technology sector CEOs at the White House on June 19, 2017, in Washington, D.C. His data center consolidation initiative is supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images

Data center consolidation the art and science of making sure technological infrastructure is being used in an efficient way does not make for great TV. But experts say it does represent good governance, because fixing it simultaneously saves money and corrects structural problems in the way the federal government is managed. This spring, bipartisan proponents of data center consolidation managed to get a bill through the House that would help get the job done more easily. But its now sitting in senatorial limbo. Even when an issue has cross-party cooperation and the support of the White House, it can still fall victim to the current state of political disarray.

Data centers are physical places housing the computers that archive information for the government records that have to be backed up so a single, failed desktop wont mean theyre lost forever; historical data that cant be consigned to the virtual trash bin but also isnt needed every day; statistics that need to be accessed by multiple people who work in different locations. Some are like warehouses imagine the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with racks of blinking electronics instead of wooden crates. Others are more prosaic, like a closet in someones office with a couple computers sitting screenless and lonely in the dark. As storage becomes less physical and more digital, well only rely on them more.

But, right now, the federal government has more data centers than it needs, which is a problem since excess data centers mean more spent on building rental, electricity demand, maintenance workers and air conditioning bills. Between 2012 and 2016, data center consolidation efforts saved taxpayers a reported $2.3 billion. But experts say theres still a long way to go. They talk in terms of the utilization rate effectively how much of the energy being used by the equipment in a data center actually goes to doing productive work. If the rate is low, that means youre spending money without getting much benefit from it. The average server in a data center owned by the federal government has a utilization rate between 9 and 12 percent, said David Powner, director of information technology management issues for the Government Accountability Office. The goal set by the federal Office of Management and Budget is something like 60 percent.

This problem isnt confined to the government, but the government has run into some unique problems while trying to solve it.

Federal data center consolidation efforts have been ongoing since 2010, but while more than 4,300 federal data centers have been closed out of a total 5,597 scheduled for elimination many were low-hanging fruit: small, closet-size data centers that didnt take much effort to close down but also didnt save much by disappearing, said former Obama Chief Information Officer Tony Scott. Closing larger data centers is more complex and, in many cases, would require technological upgrades that agencies dont have the budgets to implement. Thats because, in government, funding for software, programming, and other technological infrastructure comes when a project is first implemented. As time goes on, the project will get the funds to maintain itself, Scott said, but not the funds to improve. If it was started in the 90s, its running on 90s technology. If it started in the 60s, its running on 60s tech, he said. That can make it difficult to merge the data centers where that software is running.

Meanwhile, Powner said, there have been cases of agencies closing data centers and saving money but not reporting it. There are some weird incentives in government, Powner told me. If you dont spend your budget, theyll take it away. The result is a loss of transparency about how federal dollars are being spent. Document the savings, and you cant use it for other projects, no matter how legitimate. Fail to report the savings and it becomes available to use, but taxpayers now have no real record of how its being spent.

Texas Republican Will Hurd and Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly are trying to solve these problems with their Modernizing Government Technology Act. It would establish a centralized modernization fund that all agencies could use, and, more groundbreakingly, authorize agencies to reallocate the money theyve saved by consolidating data centers and reinvest it as working capital. Both Powner and Scott praised the effort. It passed the House easily in May. If it becomes law, the bill could be both a heartwarming show of a functional Congress working across party lines and a success for the White House. When Kushner made his first public speaking appearance in June, as part of a White House technology summit aimed at bringing ideas from the business world to government, the need for data center consolidation was one of the main issues he championed.

But that only works if the Senate has time to pay attention. We are awaiting action in the Senate, Connolly said. Given the whats the polite word? the current hiccups legislatively, one does not know if it will be a convenient time to bring it up or if they are just in stasis.

For now, the Senate version of the Modernizing Government Technology Act is sitting in committee, where its been since April. And, even if it does make it to a vote, the project of data center consolidation could still be hamstrung by management issues this bill doesnt address, like the overabundance of agency-level chief information officers. There are at least 250 people in the federal government with that title, according to Connolly and Hurd. Theyve counted 14 in the Department of Homeland Security alone. Most private companies just have one, but technology often came to the government piecemeal from the bottom up, rather than all at once from the top down. Today, so many people have the same title that its not always clear who has ultimate authority, making it difficult to know where the buck stops and who can approve consolidation decisions.

Ironically, this problem is currently exacerbated by the lack of a top CIO, the one in the White House. That role is currently unfilled, and Powner, Scott, Connolly and Hurd all said that position was important for coordinating among the different agencies and ensuring that someone has the authority to make the kinds of decisions that allow large, complex data centers to be reconfigured. Its wonderful that Kushners Office of American Innovation is paying attention to data center consolidation, Scott said, but that top CIO role will be crucial to making those goals a reality. Ideas are great, but implementation is what really matters at the end of the day, he said. If you dont have somebody really, really focused on implementation, youre going to come up short.

See more here:
Look! We Found Something Republicans, Democrats And Jared Kushner Actually Agree On! - FiveThirtyEight

The official name of the protest was the Women's March, but it became something bigger, much bigger, and expanded to include many traditional Democratic Party constituencies including environmental groups and unions.

For Democratic operatives and organizers, January 21, 2017, was akin to Christmas and your birthday falling on the same day: the party's political base was frustrated, but not depressed. Political organizers could skip months of therapy sessions designed to excite Democrats and move straight onto crafting plans for the November 2017 elections and the 2018 midterm elections.

Donald Trump had unified the Democratic Party. Or had he?

Perez, a former Secretary of Labor and Justice Department official, is now charged with trying to unite the party's liberal and establishment factions, while restoring credibility to the national party organization, whose email system was hacked by Russia in 2016.

Perez said he sees an opportunity in this age of Trump for Democrats to rally around the party's "values" on issues ranging from health care and income inequality to public education.

"We all succeed when we all succeed, and we are all better when we are united," Perez said in a recent interview on SiriusXM's "Full Stop with Mark Preston."

Except it will not be that easy.

Many liberals are still smarting over the 2016 presidential primary -- a system they argued was rigged against Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in favor of the establishment favorite, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

More than a year after Clinton won the presidential primary and seven months into Trump's presidency, the phrase "time heals all wounds" does not seem to apply to all Democrats, certainly not at last week's Netroots Nation conference. The annual gathering of liberal activists was part strategy session, part political rally and speakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, urged attendees to demand that party leaders embrace and advocate for liberal policies.

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution -- the organization founded by former Sanders campaign staff and supporters -- wasn't tiptoeing when she accused the DNC of disrespecting the progressive movement. She recounted a standoff outside the DNC headquarters in late July when she was refused access to the building. Turner, a DNC member, and the activists she led were attempting to deliver petitions to party leaders. The group was not allowed to enter the building because of security concerns, which infuriated Turner.

Perez said one of the first strategic acts he put in motion was a program called Resistance Summer.

"Resistance Summer is a down payment on what the new DNC is about," said Perez, who sat for this interview prior to the Netroots Nation conference. "It was an investment that we made, and it's in place in over 40 states, and we are paying organizers out there so that we can talk to people again. One of the things we have to do, our new mantra at the DNC, is that every zip code counts."

"So that's the new DNC," Perez said. "And one more observation, which is 2017 for me is feeling a lot like 2005. In 2005, we had a very unpopular president pursuing a very unpopular far-right agenda in cahoots with a far-right Congress, and what we were able to do in 2005, which we haven't been able to accomplish since, we won the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia. Then the following year we flipped the House, and I'm seeing a similar trend here. But the past is never prologue and what we have to do is build that infrastructure, recruit great candidates, and then organize, organize, organize with our message of a better deal and a brighter future for everybody."

(Worth noting that in the first half of 2017, Democrats went 0-3 in three special Congressional elections).

"He sucks up the oxygen, but it's one thing to suck up the oxygen with affirmative things to help people. He's been sucking up the oxygen in the room by firing all of his people, by ensnarling his administration in scandal," Perez said. "I mean the culture of chaos and corruption in this administration is off the charts, and I don't think the American people want to normalize chaos; they don't want to normalize ethical lapses; they want people fighting for a better future for them -- that's what Democrats are doing."

"Well we're making progress; we have more work to do," said Perez. "When I walked into the DNC, we had to rebuild our systems, and our fundraising department was a very good group of people, but we needed to quadruple their size and we're in the process of doing just that."

Perez said he emphasizes to donors that helping to pay for rebuilding the party infrastructure "ain't sexy," but noted it is critical to success.

"You know when your plumbing goes out in your house or the water pipes in Flint (Michigan) corrode, it has life threatening consequences," Perez said. "And similarly when the political infrastructure corrodes, we lose elections."

As Perez tries to keep the party focused on the November elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the DNC remains ground zero for Russia's hacking in the 2016 election. Perez did not go into detail when asked about the investigation other than to note that "from the onset of this investigation we've cooperated with the FBI. We continue to cooperate with people on Capitol Hill, and we'll do so throughout."

Rebuilding, reforming, uniting and winning elections in 2017 and 2018 are some pretty difficult challenges for a person to shoulder. But that is not the only responsibility Perez is saddled with in his role as DNC chair. The wide open 2020 Democratic presidential primary is just around the corner.

"Well the most important thing we're going to do is to build a fair, level playing field for everybody," Perez said. "I welcome the debate. I think there is going to be a bumper crop of candidates and that the American people are going to see a very robust Democratic Party. What will unite all of them is that they are all fighting for a better deal and a brighter future and better tomorrows for everyone, not just a few at the top. And what we're doing at the DNC is making sure we build the infrastructure, the organizing infrastructure, the technology infrastructure so that whoever ... becomes the nominee that they can walk into a DNC that enables them to sprint across the finish line.

While Perez said he hopes ideas and ideals are what helps to unite his party, it may just be mutual disgust for Trump that will act as the super glue for Democrats.

Below are some of excerpts of my interview with DNC Chairman Tom Perez. This Q&A has been edited for brevity, clarity and flow.

Mark Preston: As you look at the current state of play right now, what is the Democratic plan to address Donald Trump in this off year?

Tom Perez: Step one is that we have to take on Donald Trump in all of these areas that he's trying to take America back, and make America weak, not make America great. Equally important though, we can't simply be against Donald Trump. We've got to articulate what we are for, and we have always been fighting for a fair shake for everyone.

Preston: (W)hen you were running for chairman, ... it was a bit of a contentious fight. There was a lot of criticism from the grassroots about the battle between establishment Democrats and grassroots Democrats. ... What is being done behind the scenes to try to bridge the divide between those two (factions)?

Perez: Every single day we are leading with our values. ... If we want to address income inequality in this country, one of the most important things we can do is support efforts for people to unionize and form a union. When unions succeed, the middle class succeeds. When unions succeed, income inequality goes down, and what we have to do as a party is be out there on the issues that matter the most to people: health care, good jobs, the efforts to cut support for public education, we have to articulate what we stand for."

Preston: Is the focus right now for the DNC, when you're looking at priorities, to get back the House of Representatives?

Perez: Well, that's a very big part of what we're trying to do. We have a more immediate focus, which is 2017 because you know what, you win Virginia, you win New Jersey, you lay the foundation for future success. What we try to do is to make sure we're not only winning elections today but we're building the infrastructure for sustained success.

Read more:
Has Trump really united the Democrats? - CNN

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Americas immigration policy sorely needs modernization. By endorsing reforms offered by Sens. Tom Cotton and David Perdue, President Trump offers Congress an opportunity to better consider how new arrivals can contribute to national prosperity.

The United States has about 45 million immigrants and annually welcomes 1.5 million. About one-quarter are illegal and that has hardly changed in recent years declining birth rates abroad and tougher border enforcement have slowed the inflow.

Canada and Australia face challenges similar to ours falling birth rates, skill shortages and societies defined by waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia and both place priority on employment needs.

In contrast, the United States emphasizes family reunification. Green cards are granted automatically to spouses, minor children and parents of U.S. citizens. Subject to limits, entry is granted to other relatives of citizens, legal immigrants and refugees, and those who can contribute to economic growth.

Ultimately, about 65 percent of immigrant visas are based on family ties and 15 percent on employment. The remainder is mostly through a lottery for underrepresented countries.

The Cotton-Perdue bill would limit family reunification visas to minor children and spouses, leave employment quotas unchanged and end the lottery.

Potential economic growth is determined by the sum of productivity and labor force growth. Both have fallen, causing many economists to conclude 2 percent growth is inevitable. However, missing from this is a discussion of labor force quality.

Innovations in robotics, artificial intelligence and other areas indicate broad opportunities to boost productivity, but American businesses face shortages of skilled technicians and engineers to fully exploit those.

Immigrant workers tend to be concentrated among two groups: those with less than a high school education and those with more than a four-year college degree.

Immigrants tend to be older than the native population and more than half qualify for means-tested entitlements, creating obvious frictions.

Downward pressure on wages of lower-skilled workers is measurable, but overall the impact of immigration on growth is positive. Technology-intensive activities are greatly enhanced by the influx of higher-skilled immigrants, and those benefits overwhelm the costs imposed by lower wages on unskilled workers.

Immigration stresses social cohesion, especially among the working class new arrivals compete for jobs and often eat different foods, practice different religions, and have different family and community traditions.

Folks in small towns and rural counties, riveted by the loss of factories and consolidation in agriculture, increasingly rely on those very things to cope. And they feel alienated by the ethnic diversity and libertine values of larger cities. Those are important reasons they dont leave for educational and employment opportunities in diverse urban settings.

A discomforting reality is that big cities like New York and Los Angeles have schools and social welfare infrastructures more attuned to assimilating immigrants from Asia and Latin America than to helping migrants from conservative communities in northern Wisconsin or West Virginia.

Liberals in big cities especially in the media and universities who shape public perceptions dismiss middle-American ambivalence as ill-informed, xenophobic and racist.

After all, the urban elite work harmoniously in Manhattan office buildings, California technology centers and the like where cultural affinities that bring together professional groups tend to overwhelm ethnic differences among highly educated adults. If nothing else, professional schools like mine socialize students to common metropolis values and behavior.

What works for Ivy League and elite state university graduates does not rhyme well for high school graduates in Americas interior thats why Donald Trump was elected to the dismay of urban intellectuals.

The Cotton-Perdue proposal would likely maintain the current flow of new immigrant workers but greatly reduce the numbers of older and less-educated dependents who strain the social safety net. However, America needs more and better immigrants and fewer that create friction with struggling citizens already reeling from the forces of globalization and technological change.

Perhaps a better approach would be to grant visas to anyone with a college degree or technical skill, who has a solid job offer and will not displace an incumbent worker, but still limit, as Messrs. Cotton and Perdue suggest, family reunification visas to minor children and spouses.

That would boost the size and quality of the labor force, accelerate economic growth and ease social tensions.

Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.

Read the original post:
Immigration reform for a more prosperous America - Washington Times

Donald Trump had been sounding the same populist notes since he first flirted with running for president, all the way back in 1987: The United States is weak and stupid, is being exploited by wily foreign competitors, and needs to negotiate better trade deals to raise wages and bring back good jobs. But in 2013, he added a new verse to the hymnal. Trump began talking about the menace of illegal immigration.

He added this issue to his populist arsenal in large part because Steve Bannon then the head of the right-wing Breitbart News, now Trumps chief White House strategist brought it to his attention. It quickly became a core part of Trumps message because he could see that it resonated with the Republican base. At the time, leaders of both parties were committed to passing comprehensive immigration reform (derided as amnesty by its opponents). Trump went in the other direction, promising a crackdown.

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He didnt take polls or convene focus groups to arrive at this position not exactly. What he did instead was turn to Twitter, where he could easily gauge his followers interests. That was our focus group, Sam Nunberg, a Trump aide, told me in an interview for my book on Trump and Bannon. Every time Trump tweeted against amnesty in 2013, 2014, he would get hundreds and hundreds of retweets.

Trumps heretical position on immigration didnt win him many friends among Republican leaders. But he made a deep connection with Republican voters. More than any other issue, Trumps hard-line views on immigration and his vow to build The Wall carried him to the White House.

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Two hundred days into his administration, Trump doesnt have much in the way of tangible accomplishments to brag about. He didnt, as he promised during the campaign, repeal and replace Obamacare. His goal of rewriting the US tax code by the end of August also isnt going to pan out. At a recent West Virginia rally, Trump claimed, falsely, that his administration was bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States by the hundreds of thousands the hottest jobs sector is actually restaurant and bar work (which pays much worse). By standard metrics, its easy to chalk up Trumps presidency as a failure.

Threatening to withhold public safety funding to force local jurisdictions to ignore the Constitution is unconscionable.

But on the issue that transformed his political persona and drove his presidential campaign immigration Trump has delivered more to his supporters than hes often given credit for.

His administration has stepped up arrests of undocumented immigrants. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say arrests are up nearly 40 percent this year over the same period in 2016. Trump also signed a series of executive actions: One ends the catch and release policy whereby immigrants are released from detention while they await a hearing with an immigration judge; another halts federal funding to sanctuary cities and states that dont report undocumented immigrants (a California judge has issued a nationwide injunction blocking the action). Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has reassigned immigration judges to border states to hasten deportations.

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One reason Trump has been able to change immigration policy is that most of what he wants to do doesnt require Congress to pass new laws. People dont appreciate the extent to which we have set in motion a substantial and long-overdue change to US laws and authorities, Stephen Miller, a senior White House official, told me earlier this year. He cited as an example a program known as 287(g), a section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of immigration laws.

Trump hasnt gotten everything he wants on immigration, not by a long stretch. Although the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to begin construction of his border wall, building it to completion will require congressional appropriations that arent likely to be easily forthcoming.

Even so, the presidents hostility to illegal immigration appears to have reduced the number of people trying to enter the country illegally. In March, the number of immigrants caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border fell to a 17-year low. And Trump is also pushing to reduce legal immigration by endorsing a bill to cut immigration levels in half.

So far, Trumps presidency has been chiefly defined by his failures, which have hurt his standing in the polls. But his support among Republicans, although it has weakened somewhat, remains strong. Those most fiercely loyal to Trump are the voters who care most deeply about issues like immigration. Trumps ability to deliver for them has kept them in the fold and propped up his presidency at least, for now.

Read the original post:
Donald Trump is winning on immigration - The Boston Globe

Even then, the reform Obama tried to pass was middling at best. It would have taken undocumented immigrants 13 years to gain citizenship. It would have added an insane $46 billion for increased border security. That was a false option for us, says Shah of the Detention Watch Network. It was like, lets terrorize some communities in order to benefit others. And in the end, no deal was to be had with a Republican Party that was being torn apart by the vehemently anti-immigrant forces that would one day propel Trump to the Oval Office.

The overall result has been a massive build-up of enforcement, without the corresponding changes to legalization that Democrats want. A report by the Migration Policy Institute found that, in 2012, the federal government spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement, 24 percent more than all other principal law enforcement agencies combined.

In this respect, Trump is not an anomaly, but rather the culmination of draconian immigration policies that resulted from decades of over-compromise. As Jimnez says, What we have seen from Democrats is this false notion and political miscalculation that more aggressive enforcement and criminalization of some members of the community will get you a pathway to citizenship for others.

Still, some centrist Democrats feel that the party should move backwards instead of forwards. Last week a new political group that includes Democratic mayors, governors, and congressmen was launched to prevent the Democratic Party from moving left. Called New Democracya nod to Bill Clintons New Democrat campaignone of the groups strategies is to bridge the cultural divide to combat what it calls corrosive identity politics: On immigration, for example, Democrats should stick to their guns in supporting a humane path to legalization. But we also should take seriously public concerns about the breakdown of public order, the impact of low-skill immigrants on native workers jobs and pay.

But if Obamas case is any example, Democratic politicians will reap few political rewards from the center and the right by adopting their concerns. And given the virtual reign of terror immigrants are facing under Donald Trump, these compromises have become increasingly unacceptable to progressives. With all undocumented immigrants being fair game, ICE officials have crossed invisible lines to raid schools, churches, and courthouses. Lawyers are playing what The New York Times has called a game of cat and mouse, shuffling their immigrant defendants out of courtrooms if they suspect ICE agents are there, waiting to pounce.

While deportations have decreased under Trump compared with Obama (in large part because more undocumented immigrants are being arrested in the interior of the country, rather than near the border) immigrant arrests have increased, including of those who have never committed a crime. Even children who are protected under DACA have been arrested. This has all contributed to a climate of fear: Some children are too afraid to go to school, while other immigrants are even avoiding the doctor.

As a result, the worse it gets under Trump, the more the pro-immigrant community will feel justified in demanding more from Democrats. The community is ready to stand up against them if Democrats think that the old way is the way forward, says Jimnez of United We Dream. Sharry adds, The pro-immigrant movement is not interested in a balanced approach in which Republicans get a lot of the enforcement they want and Democrats get the legalization they want and they arrive at a deal.

Democrats may meet harsh resistance even when they attempt to mitigate the damage Trump is threatening to wreak. In the spending deal passed in May to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, Democrats celebrated a win because they had stripped funding for Trumps border wall. But they also conceded $1.5 billion in border security funding.

There is now a campaign led by pro-immigrant groups to push Democrats to defund the deportation machine in Trumps 2018 budget request, including reducing the funds going to Department of Homeland Security, which controls ICE and CBP. They have also zeroed in on Trumps request for a drastic increase in immigrant detention beds. All of these Democrats openly support DACA and are for some form of comprehensive immigration reform, but theyre also quietly, through the appropriations process, supporting funding for things like more detention beds, says Shah of the Detention Watch Network.

Shah notes that appropriations is a key battleground, since its an area that Congress controls and that has a lot of impact on the immigrant community. RepresentativeLuis Gutirrez, along with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, sent a letter advocating for such an approach in March and Senator Kamala Harris, along with other Democratic senators, did the same in June.

The problem is that it might be too late. The hardline immigration wing of the Republican Party is pushing to end DACA, which Trump has not done yet. A group of ten Republican state attorney generals has threatened to file a federal lawsuit over the constitutionality of the program if Trump does not act. As Dara Lind explains at Vox, if DACA is killed, it would put a lot of political pressure on Congress to find some sort of compromise to protect the newly vulnerable Dreamers. Democrats would be negotiating from a position of weakness and would likely be more willing to concede on enforcement policies or even sign on to permanent policy changes. The most draconian measure would be Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdues RAISE Act, which would create a merit-based immigration system that has been criticized for drastically slashing immigration levels and fortargeting immigrants of color.

In key policy areas, progressives have set goals, from a $15 federal minimum wage to free college tuition. In health care, for example, the goal is getting everyone insured, whether through single-payer or other means. On a movement level, it gives activists and politicians alike goal posts that have to be reached. On a rhetorical level, it shifts the Overton window towards the idea that everyone in the country deserves comprehensive coverage. But is there an equivalent that could work with immigration reform?

There is the established goal of making sure all 11 million undocumented immigrants in America have a quick and non-punitive pathway to citizenship. Many also agree that we should make it easier to enter the country legally in the first place by reforming our visa system so that it prioritizes separated family members and allows more people to enter both overall and from countries with greater demand.

But other aspects of a comprehensive package are trickier. Chomsky told me that its difficult to apply the health care model to immigration reform because the latter is even more complex: Immigration is both national and global. Its not a single issue thing, its a multi-issue thing. Foreign policy, social justice policy, economic policythey are all tied up with the dynamics of immigration. Even if those 11 million undocumented immigrants could instantly gain full citizenship rights today, the root causes of what forces people to leave their homes in the first place would still lay unaddressed.

Then theres the fact that immigration overlaps with another policy area that itself is badly in need of reform. When youre looking at the way immigration intersects with the criminal justice system, Shah says, you are also grappling with the need for a broader racial justice paradigm shift.

But there are certain principles that progressives have to agree on. Decriminalization has to be at the root, Chomsky says. We need to create a just domestic immigration policy that begins from the perspective that all people have certain inalienable rights. This includes treating the vast bulk of immigrants as job-seekers and potential contributors to society, not suspected felons or terrorist threats.

Take, for example, the fact that ICE has started to target parents who have brought their children over the border. In doing so, they are taking advantage of the Democratic position that these children came to the U.S. through no fault of their own, implying that the fault does lie with someone. The Trump administration merely assigns that fault to their parents. Dividing immigrants between good ones and bad onesor as Obama put it, felons, not familieshas played right into the criminalization narrative.

On the deportation side, Democrats should seek to dramatically scale down the ICEs activities. On the access side, what most activists want is not a set quota of immigrants allowed into the country, but a flexible system that is sensitive to the economys needsa system that takes into account worker rights, family reunification, and the needs of employers.

For undocumented immigrants, the next few years will be a desperate battle to survive. (As Sharry dryly put it, Lets see if theres a population of undocumented immigrants here to be legalized, before we reengage on immigration reform.)But if someone like Trump can be elected, immigrants in this country will never be safe unless Congress passes real reform, one that dismantles our current deportation and detention regime.Trump might be an exceptionally racist president, but he is working with the tools that his predecessors gave him.

See the article here:
How Democrats Gave Us Trump's Immigration Nightmare - New Republic