Make people who grew up here, or who have been here for a long time (say, 10 years +) into citizens. Admit people who are genuine refugees. End the drug war by legalizing drugs so that we have fewer refugees. Stop funding autocratic dictators in Central America so we have fewer refugees. Then we can start a serious discussion about H1-B and who we actually want to admit to the country.
As for the jobs issue, it's not primarily about immigrants; the jobs went to China and Indonesia and so forth; I actually think we should impose adjustment tariffs on countries which don't have the same labor and environmental standards as we do, to end the "race to the bottom" effect. Of course Republicans have opposed this idea for my entire life. Democrats supported it as recently as the 1990s.
Unfortunately, Trump's tariffs are flat-out stupid. (Tariffs against Canada?!?!) They are not rational adjustment tariffs.
The people ranting about immigrants taking their jobs did lose their job to a foreigner, it just wasn't a foreigner who ever set foot in the United States.
Long long ago I rarely watched the TV show Cheers, but I did happen to catch an episode where the know-it-all mailman guy got on Jeopardy when they were filming in Boston and a number of the people from the bar went to be in the audience. Going into the final round the mailman guy had a large lead, but didn't know the final question. Norm predicted that the mailman was going to blow it by going all in when he didn't have a clue and he did.
I think of that whenever I see Trump make policy except he's been going all in without a clue at every opportunity since he took the oath of office. The tariffs were such a bad idea he had to find an obscure, ostracized economist to agree with him (Peter Navaro). Shutting down the government over the wall is another stupid idea. It's probably going to have ripple effects through the economy for the rest of this year at least. The big tax scam is going to impact the economy too.
People tend to credit the incumbent when the economy is good and blame them when it's bad. Government policy definitely affects the economy, but it takes a year or two to have any effect. Trump inherited Obama's economy and it's stayed afloat despite Trump's worst efforts to destroy it, but the bill for all the damage wrought is coming.
Look at what state I'm in.
I don't think I need to remind Schumer or Gillibrand.
I'm in the same boat, thought my senators are quieter on the shutdown than yours. They both agree 100% with New York's.
The shutdown has already started impacting one of the biggest employers in Washington. The FAA inspects and issues a flight worthiness certificate to every new airplane before it can be put into commercial service. Every commercial Boeing delivery in the US is sitting on the ground awaiting certification.
The federal employees union has filed a lawsuit about the shutdown claiming that it is illegal to make government workers work without pay and without knowing when they will get paid. These workers are also facing real financial damages that can follow them for years and even if they get their back pay, it won't cover their interest charges on their credit cards, or get their car back if it got repoed. Nor will it repair their credit rating.
In any case my SO and I were talking about this lawsuit yesterday and what if the court says the government is violating the 13th amendment making people work without knowing when they will get paid and if the bill pending to pay them doesn't get passed and signed, they may never get paid.
If the court rules those people can't work without getting paid and the impasse continues, then all government employees in the departments that don't have a spending bill (some like the DoD are funding through some point later this year), need to shut down until these people are paid. That would include the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Corrections. No Coast Guard, no border patrol, no prison guards, no air traffic controllers...
I don't think the Department of the Treasury is funded either, so no secret service protection either.
That would put a lot of pressure on. Bills to re-open all those departments are sitting in McConnell's inbox, he could have them on Trump's desk in less than 24 hours if he wanted to. There are basically two people in the entire government holding everything up: Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. It's estimated there are at least 70 votes in the Senate for all the bills Pelosi has passed out of the House. That would be enough to override a Trump veto, though there may not be enough Republican votes in the House yet to override a veto.
A lot of Republican insiders who thought they knew how McConnell worked are baffled at his actions on this. He's a political player to the nth degree and will do whatever he can to advance his side and himself and all he's doing here is making it worse for the rest of his senators who have to run in 2020, including himself.
