A Modest DACA Proposal

After all the talk and the government shutdown, came the promise of an intention to maybe look at possible legislation to sort of deal with Dreamers. Both sides then staked out positions which included various bargaining chips. Let’s keep it simple – a straight up or down vote on a clean DACA bill. No amendments, no extraneous garbage.  A yes vote and the Dreamers get to stay, and they get an expedient path to citizenship – maybe a year or two for processing, not 10 to 12 years. A no vote and the Dreamers have to go, and their deportations should be expedient.

If there is a yes vote, the Dreamers stay and keep doing what they have been doing: going to school, working, hanging out with friends – the things most young people do. In short, life would continue, and you would hardly notice any change.

If there is a no vote, the government should begin immediate arrests. Detainees should be transported to prisons near the Mexican border (maybe around El Paso). Within about 2 or 3 months, the government should be able to round up almost all of the Dreamers and verify identities. And then we kick all the illegals out. And to make certain they all leave, we should make them march across the border single file, so we can get a picture of each one exiting. Back of napkin calculations - about 750,000 illegals would create a single file line about 600 miles long. It would take about 2 to 4 weeks for them to be marched across the border.

That would be a spectacle and the TV ratings would be huge. Even more spectacular if we could somehow get all the Congress people to show up, because they really should see in-person, the consequences of their vote. TV could have a split-screen of the illegals going through the turnstile, and then show the Democrats crying about how they failed the Dreamers and the Republicans stammering about how they are the party of family values and not racists.

See, this politics stuff is simple.