At this stage of the game, nobody could be called surprised. The president of the United States is, above all, a merchant. Beyond his megalomania and preference for the most retrograde and scandalous positions – “I grab them by the pussy … Mexicans (are) rapists, Muslims = terrorist” and a long etcetera–, Donald Trump considers himself a “genius” (sic) in the world of business. And today his main negotiating card is the fate of almost one million young Americans who came to this country as babies, in the arms of their undocumented parents.
Hostages of the rhetoric of hatred and the anti-immigrant fervor of the most primitive sector of the American society, for the White House the Dreamers are, the currency of exchange with which it hopes to obtain the first 25 billion dollars that may allow it to fulfill the more visible and useless of his electoral promises: the construction of that “great, great and beautiful wall” along the 2,000 miles along the border between the United States and Mexico.
The fact that for more than 10 years the migratory rate between both countries is less than zero -that is, more Mexicans leave the United States than those who arrive-, or the reality that more than half of new immigrants arrive in the country by air and simply exceed the time of their legal stay, are irrelevant issues within Mr. Trump’s personal universe.
Oblivious to reality – the contributions of immigrants to the US economy are much greater than the costs they generate, the crime rates of their communities are much lower than the rest of society – one of the favorite flags of Trump´s administration remains the threat of mass deportation for millions of immigrants. Starting with the Dreamers who had obtained legal protection towards the end of Barak Obama’s government.
Very close to completing the 6 months of his ultimatum for Congress to agree on the immigration reform that has been urgent for the country for more than a quarter of a century, the issue of the Dreamers has been reduced to a piece of exchange between the groups of power in Washington.
Included and rejected in the discussions on the budget the legal destiny of these young people
It has been conditioned on the approval of the White House’s strategy to “whitewash” the profile of immigrants (via the “merit system”, the abandonment of lotteries and recognition of the family ties of new immigrants).
Within the classic game of dark maneuver that always accompany the legislative process in this country – “the elaboration of the laws is like that of the sausages: nobody wants to know how they are prepared” -, the migratory issue remains a knot impossible to untie.
Currently, despite Mr. Trump games and his isolationist, xenophobic, and racist flags that helped him get to the White House, the vast majority of American society continues to support the need for immigration reform that recognizes reality, that is, as he said during 2016 Vice President Joseph Biden, that the vast majority of so-called illegals are already, in fact, Americans.
Perhaps for this reason, until now the maneuvers of the Trump Administration to negotiate advantageous positions before the Mexican government in the NAFTA negotiations, or millionaire resources within the budget for its wall, have been unsuccessful. Even at the risk of destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and giving one’s foot to the economy of this country, the personal stories of each of the Dreamers are eloquent demonstrations of the nonsense of a broken immigration system that, with or without Trump, it must be rebuilt.
