BUDGET/IMMIGRATION/POLITICS: “For months, lawmakers were convinced that an inevitable showdown over immigration would come down to funding for President Donald Trump’s promised border wall as part of a package to protect young immigrants. Instead, the fight that sparked the continuing government shutdown centers on an array of other conservative policies Mr. Trump is insisting on as part of any legislation.
That shift shows how the Trump administration has pushed the immigration debate to the right, and reveals that while the idea of a wall has symbolic importance for both sides, each sees it as far less important than other ideas.
Democrats have as much as conceded that they will support funding for the wall, having included money for it in a bipartisan proposal. The central question now is what other, more sweeping changes to immigration policy Democrats will accept in exchange for providing legal status to young people who have been shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, whose end Mr. Trump announced in September… At the same time, people on both sides are focused less on the wall and more on the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already in the U.S., as well as on the many people who arrive at ports of entry and turn themselves in to border agents…
The wall is much less important than any of those measures, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports strict legal and illegal immigration controls.”
-Laura Meckler, “Border Wall Recedes as Issue in Immigration Fight,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan. 21, 2018 07:00am