May08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

The Clown Show, Part III: $1,000 to Self-Deport

Donald Trump and his team are not having much success in fulfilling their pledge to deport a million undocumented immigrants in his first year back in the White House. And so, in the latest act of desperation, the administration has offered a $1,000 incentive to any person willing to "self-deport."

We have three comments about this initiative:

1. If a Democratic president were to so much as whisper a faint hint of a vague possibility of such a plan, the right-wingers in Congress and the right-wingers in the media would have their pitchforks out. "Oh, now we're paying people to break the law?" they would say.
   
   
2. At first glance, there is a certain logic to the administration's plan. It undoubtedly costs well more than $1,000 per deportation (for what it's worth, the White House says it's $17,000/each). So, it seems like a great way to save some big-time money. However, this is yet another case where it would be really helpful for someone, anyone, on Team Trump to crack open a history book. These sorts of schemes have been tried before, most obviously in the late 1930s, as the Great Depression lingered on (and on and on). And, as it turns out, immigrants (whether documented or no) are in the U.S. for a reason. Either there is something pulling them into the country (say, the presence of family members) or something pushing them out of the country they left (say, lack of opportunity, or perhaps ongoing violence). A thousand bucks is not enough to change that calculus, and so what invariably happens is that the small number of people who take the deal are largely those who were about to leave anyhow. So, it's a low acceptance rate AND it's not really much of a cost savings.
   
   
3. This is reminder #282 that while Trump talked a big game about immigration on the campaign trail, he had no real plan, despite the fact that he'd already been president before, and so should have had some insight into what might be done.

Speaking of plans, we can't understand why the White House didn't just follow this basic template. First, keep doing what Joe Biden was doing, which was working fairly well, despite Trump's claims to the contrary. Second, have a few high-profile enforcement actions, possibly involving Dr. Phil, to get some press about everything the administration is doing to combat those durned illegals. Third, have Trump go on Truth Social, and his underlings go on Fox, and declare total and complete victory, and a "historic" reduction in illegal immigration. The base doesn't give two craps about evidence, or the truth, and they would have swallowed that without question.

Maybe there's a flaw in our plan. After all, we spent a grand total of 30 seconds drawing it up. Still, it seems better than what the administration has actually come up with, which is mostly comprised of: (1) flail around, desperately trying to find something—anything—that might work, and (2) get involved in a bunch of illegal deportations, and thus lawsuits, that serve to produce a lot of negative press, fire up the opposition, and sour vast numbers of voters on Trump in general, and Trump's immigration policy in particular. The last four or five polls to ask respondents about immigration, like the latest from AP-NORC, now have him underwater on immigration (52% disapprove, 46% approve, in this case). And this is supposed to be his strongest issue. Our guess is that he'd be doing at least a little better if he had gone with the Electoral-Vote.com plan. (Z)