Trump's two-faced positioning on the H-1B Visa Program in 2024 is mirrored by his two-faced positioning on DACA from 2015

 

 Trump was NEVER all-in about his immigration positions, which went back and forth from the beginning. 

People forget that he and Ann Coulter had a knock-down drag-out fight in the Oval Office about immigration sometime in late 2017, early 2018. The newly elected president had done NOTHING about the border wall, deportations, and the Dreamers. He had used her book about immigration to distinguish himself from the numerous other GOP candidates and get himself elected, and promptly tossed her aside like all the other women he has cheated on.

Trump is nothing if he's not a user.

People also forget the blow up in August 2016 before he was even president, when Trump toyed publicly with the idea of a DACA amnesty. NeverTrump noticed:

Donald Trump ... is suddenly embracing the idea of working out a way to give legal status to undocumented immigrants who have been here a long time and have kept out of trouble. ... Trump's latest comments that it makes no sense to deport millions of people who have lived in the U.S. for a decade or more -- which constitutes two-thirds of the undocumented immigrants here now -- are a far cry from what he had been saying for the previous 14 months.

MAGA ignored this. Conservatives like Coulter were demoralized, months before they were actually betrayed. Trump only narrowly defeated Hillary. 

And few remember how he blew himself up in the 2018 elections, losing the House, in part because he used DACA as a bargaining chip in early 2018 in a failed attempt to get his wall funded, shutting down the government in the process. His lone achievements in his first two years were a modest and temporary tax cut package, and a massive defense spending bill to restore what Obama had gutted.

The legions of disaffected young men hoping Trump-Vance would bring a new era of opportunity for native born Americans over cheaper foreign workers are sadly experiencing buyer's remorse because of Trump's capitulation to the Tech Bros, discovering anew that Trump is the snake in the parable he always used to talk about on the campaign trail.

Welcome to hell part deux.

 

Labor's share of income nosedived in the '90s after NAFTA, briefly recovered and then tanked as globalization/China took over

Do you feel richer? Well do ya?

Employers call all the shots, and you get the crumbs from your masters' tables, if you are lucky. 

Stop voting for the free-traders and libertarian lunatics of the two major parties.

1986 was the last year domestic investment exceeded investment abroad, which is why everything REALLY SUCKS here now

NAFTA began with Canada in 1989, was expanded in 1994, China became a WTO member in 2001, but the 1986 tax reform really started the final leg down

George Herbert Walker Bush's legacy: It took only 7 years of NAFTA to destroy hours worked in the United States

Hours of all persons grew 44% during the Reagan bull market, which ended in August 2000. Since then, hours of all persons has grown just 3%.

NAFTA went into effect in January 1994, eleven years after the Reagan bull began and a little over one year after Bush inked the deal. Seven years later hours of all persons peaked.

It reminds me of Bill Clinton's innovation, the so-called Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which blew up the housing market after just 10 years.

Republicans take away your job, then Democrats come along and take away your house.

If you're living in your car, you'd better watch your back.  

The immediate effect of NAFTA passage in late 1993 was pushing 2.3 million more Americans into part-time employment by the end of June 1994

Trump: Hillary's married to the man who signed NAFTA, she's not bringing your jobs back

This guy lost his job because of NAFTA, along with 4.5 million other Americans since 1993: He just voted for Trump

From the story, here:

Randall Williams and his wife, Brenda, were two of those workers. For three decades, they helped assemble the hermetically sealed motors that power air conditioners sold all across America. At the end, they were each making $16.10 an hour. That kind of money’s just a dream now: Randall fills orders at a local farm supply store; Brenda works in the high school cafeteria. For a while, he said, their combined income didn’t even add up to one of their old factory wages. ... He voted for the billionaire in Kentucky’s Republican caucus this month. So did many of his neighbors. In Allen County, a collection of eight towns strewn along the Tennessee border, Trump dominated his rivals, racking up 42 percent of the vote on his way to a narrow victory that night in Kentucky.

John Kasich isn't the only Ohio Republican who voted for NAFTA: So did John Boehner and Rob Portman

Here 17 November 1993.

House Roll Call here.

Donald Trump again brought NFL-level ratings to Republican debate, this time 23 million to CNN, its most-watched program ever

Reported here:

"Wednesday's prime time GOP debate averaged 22.9 million viewers, making it the most-watched program in CNN's history. ... CNN's most-watched program overall was a special "Larry King Live" episode in 1993. The episode featured Al Gore and Ross Perot debating NAFTA and averaged 16.8 million viewers. ... These are NFL-level ratings -- affirming that the Donald Trump fueled Republican debate slate is one of the most popular television shows of the year."

Trump comes out swinging with illegal immigration policy paper

Here.

Grab your box of Depends. The Donald means business.

Some highlights:

• Triple the number of ICE officers
• Implement nationwide e-verify
• Mandatory deportation of all criminal aliens
• No more catch and release
• Cut-off federal funds to sanctuary cities
• Criminalize visa overstays
• Deploy ICE with local police in gang raids
• End birthright citizenship
• Increase prevailing wage requirements for H-1B visas to stem the tide of foreign hires at US workers' expense
• Immigrants must prove they are self-supporting
• Terminate the jobs program for foreign youth
• Suspend issuance of green cards to foreign workers until employment improves for citizens
• Make Mexico pay for the wall, or impound remittances derived from illegal wages ($22 billion in 2013) and increase fees on temporary visas of Mexican CEOs and diplomats, on all border crossing cards, on NAFTA worker visas and at all ports of entry from Mexico
• Generally restore the rule of law and order by actually enforcing existing laws