Democrats will lose this fall by fighting over immigration now

As Congress prepares to debate immigration this week, the Democrats have an opportunity to solve a political problem that could make or break their chances to regain power in Washington. That political problem is the role of immigration in the 2018 midterms and 2020 presidential election.

Put directly, the data shows that immigration probably cost the Democrats the presidency in 2016, particularly in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with a high percentage of noncollege-educated whites who switched their support from President Obama to Donald Trump.

By agreeing to a deal on immigration, whether it be one that the president has proposed or one that Congress is now working on, the Democrats can simultaneously take the issue off the table and score what will be perceived as a victory on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for individuals whose parents brought them to the United States as minors and through no fault of their own find themselves here illegally.

Despite vocal resistance to the president, the party appears to have not learned its lesson from 2016. House Minority Leader Nancy PelosiNancy Patricia D’Alesandro PelosiGOP lawmaker: Dems not standing for Trump is ‘un-American’ Rep. Gutiérrez: ‘Complete betrayal’ if Pelosi backs budget caps deal without DACA Senate leaders say they’re zeroing in on two-year budget deal MORE’s (D-Calif.) eight-and-a-half-hour speech last week and Senate Minority Leader Chuck SchumerCharles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerGOP lawmaker: Dems not standing for Trump is ‘un-American’ Trump called for unity — he didn’t even last a week Overnight Defense: GOP plays hardball by attaching defense funding to CR | US reportedly drawing down in Iraq | Russia, US meet arms treaty deadline | Why the military wants 6B from Congress MORE’s (D-N.Y.) federal government shutdown in late January were not only wrongheaded, but were politically destructive.

By focusing exclusively on the Dreamers and offering no practical limits on immigration, much less any border security, the Democrats are in the process of writing their own political obituary for November and beyond. But a deal with President TrumpDonald John TrumpTillerson: Russia already looking to interfere in 2018 midterms Dems pick up deep-red legislative seat in Missouri Speier on Trump’s desire for military parade: ‘We have a Napoleon in the making’ MORE can turn this perennially difficult issue into an electoral benefit. Here’s how.

President Trump has proposed a compromise by offering a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, building a wall on the southern border, ending the visa lottery program, and ending what he calls “chain migration” and what the Democrats call “family unification.”

In fact, Sen. Chuck GrassleyCharles (Chuck) Ernest GrassleyOvernight Cybersecurity: Tillerson proposes new cyber bureau at State | Senate bill would clarify cross-border data rules | Uber exec says ‘no justification’ for covering up breach Overnight Finance: Senators near two-year budget deal | Trump would ‘love to see a shutdown’ over immigration | Dow closes nearly 600 points higher after volatile day | Trade deficit at highest level since 2008 | Pawlenty leaving Wall Street group Grassley to Sessions: Policy for employees does not comply with the law MORE (R-Iowa) has proposed a bill in Congress based on these four planks. The Democrats have previously said this proposal is dead-on-arrival, which is a clear mistake and there are some small bits of evidence now that the party is waking up to the fact that the Schumer-Pelosi approach was just plain wrong.

This past weekend, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) teased that he might be willing to support the president’s wall. The precise words Blumenthal used were an openness to “strengthening some of the physical structures and fence,” indicating that he was prepared to accept the president’s deal.  This deal offers a pathway to citizenship for more than twice as many Dreamers as President Obama protected through his 2012 DACA executive order in exchange for simply securing the border.

The statistical evidence is very clear that border security and controlling immigration remain central issues for the American people, particularly the 9.2 percent of Obama voters who defected from the Democratic Party to vote for President Trump, based on a report from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. Contrary to what the Democrats have maintained, border security tests extremely well in public polling. The latest Harvard-Harris poll found that an overwhelming majority, 79 percent, of Americans believe the United States needs secure borders.

While immigration reform has been framed by Democrats as a tradeoff between a popular initiative for the Dreamers and an unpopular wall, this is a misreading of public opinion. The wall is indeed unpopular, but it actually serves as a proxy for border security, which remains a central concern of many voters, especially in swing states and among noncollege-educated whites.

In terms of electoral politics, if the Democrats are to regain the House, they will need to win back Obama-Trump voters in the Midwest, as well as independents and moderates throughout the country. In fact, 10 of the 38 Republicans who are retiring or otherwise vacating their seats in 2018 are from the four Midwestern states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll also finds that the advantage Democrats hold in the generic congressional vote comes almost entirely from districts the party already holds.  Indeed, the Democrats hold a lead by a strong 38 points in their own districts, yet trail Republicans by six points in the very districts they need to flip in order to regain the House.

It is very clear that immigration may very well have made the difference in 2016. In conjunction with the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group’s report, John Sides from George Washington University also found that attitudes about illegal immigration were strongly correlated with vote switching. In particular, the voters who were most likely to switch from Obama to Trump opposed a pathway to citizenship and believed that immigrants detract from American society.

Thus, to expand their base of support, the party needs to win back the precise voters who defected from President Obama to give Donald Trump his electoral college victory by reconciling their positions on immigration. It may well be that the Democrats and Republicans can arrive at a compromise, which, on the whole, would work in the Democrats favor because the primary objective is to take the issue off the table.

Approaching the 2018 midterms, the American people are tired of leaders playing politics on immigration reform and are disappointed that Democrats are putting up roadblocks when they have radically changed their position from when they supported similar legislation just a few years ago.

In 2013, Schumer and his “Gang of Eight” introduced a $46 billion overhaul of U.S. immigration law squarely aimed at strengthening border security and providing illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship. Had the bill passed, it would have doubled the number of border patrol agents to 40,000 and required the construction of 350 miles of fencing. This deal has largely gone by the wayside, clearly to the electoral disadvantage of the Democrats.

In 1996, President Clinton proposed the basis of the current immigration system, along with efforts to take other economic and social issues off the table, like the federal deficit and welfare reform, and by being committed to border security, the Democrats had neutralized the issue until their leftward shift following the failure of the “Gang of Eight.”

With Republicans still split on the issue and the Republican Freedom Caucus opposing any deal that involves what they call amnesty, the Democrats can claim a victory on DACA through a compromise, position themselves as committed to border security, and paint the Republicans as a divided, ineffective governing party.

Moreover, making a deal on immigration would force President Trump to concede that American taxpayers, not Mexico, would be paying for the wall at a time when tax reform and the new budget deal have added approximately $3 trillion to the deficit. Such a deal would reinforce the fact that the Republicans are not fiscally responsible and make the administration much weaker, and indeed hypocritical, as they commit as much as $25 billion to the construction of a wall.

Ultimately, if the Democrats can wake up and acknowledge the mistake they have made, they can turn the issue around. If not, it could well consign the party to permanent minority status.

Douglas E. Schoen served as a pollster for President Clinton. A longtime political consultant, he is also a Fox News contributor.

Andrew J. Stein is a former president of the New York City Council and a former president of Manhattan Borough.

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Trump Threatens to Veto Immigration Bills that Don’t Meet His Demands

The president’s decision to weigh in forcefully is likely to undermine the efforts of several bipartisan groups in the Senate and the House by calling into question whether any legislation they come up with might be dead-on-arrival once they make it to the president’s desk.

Instead, Mr. Trump said in the statement that lawmakers should support Mr. Grassley’s immigration legislation to codify his own plan. The bill would provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants, end the visa lottery program, build a border wall and end what he calls “chain migration,” which is family-based immigration.

“The overwhelming majority of American voters support a plan that fulfills the Framework’s four pillars, which move us towards the safe, modern, and lawful immigration system our people deserve,” Mr. Trump said.

He added that he would oppose a smaller, “Band-aid” approach to immigration that some lawmakers have been discussing, which would protect Dreamers for a few years in exchange for a small increase in border security spending — essentially kicking the issue down the road.

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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, responded harshly to the president’s entreaty, noting with dismay that Mr. Trump last September ended the Obama-era program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which protected the Dreamers from deportation and provided them work permits.

“The American people know what’s going on,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor. “They know this president not only created the problem, but seems to be against every solution that might pass because it isn’t 100 percent of what he wants. If, at the end of the week, we are unable to find a bill that can pass — and I sincerely hope that’s not the case due to the good efforts of so many people on both sides of the aisle — the responsibility will fall entirely on the president’s shoulders and those in this body who went along with him.”

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Republicans searching for a compromise on immigration were similarly perplexed.

“The president’s going to have a vote on his concept. I don’t think it will get 60 votes,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina said, adding, “The bottom line then is: What do you do next? You can do what we’ve done for the last 35 years — blame each other. Or you can actually start fixing the broken immigration system. If you came out of this with strong border security — the president getting his wall and the Dream Act population being taken care of, most Americans would applaud.”

Mr. Trump’s statement was a victory for conservatives in his administration, including Stephen Miller, his top domestic policy adviser, who have been pushing the president to demand an overhaul of the nation’s immigration rules in exchange for his support of a permanent solution for the Dreamers.

Several senior White House advisers told reporters on Wednesday that Mr. Trump will not relent in his support for his hard-line immigration principles and said Dreamers should blame Democrats if legislation does not pass.

One senior adviser, who requested anonymity to discuss legislative strategy, said the president had made “dramatic concessions” by agreeing to a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants. Another made it clear that Mr. Trump will not compromise any further.

That position was underscored on Wednesday by a Department of Homeland Security statement that slammed a competing immigration measure being offered by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware.

That bipartisan bill would call for more border security, but would not directly finance construction of a border wall that Mr. Trump has promised. The bill would offer a way for Dreamers to become legal; the D.H.S. statement described it as a “mass legalization” measure.

“The McCain-Coons proposal would increase illegal immigration, surge chain migration, continue catch-and-release and give a pathway to citizenship to convicted alien felons,” the statement from the department said.

The top Republicans in both the House and Senate praised the statements from the administration on Wednesday, describing them as a boost for the approach that many of their more conservative members support.

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“The president has made clear what principles must be addressed if we are going to make a law instead of merely making political points,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Wednesday morning.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin echoed that sentiment, saying that “the president did a very good job of putting a very sincere offer on the table. And that sincere offer that he put on the table should be the framework through which we come together to find a solution.”

While the president’s support of the Iowa Republican’s bill is not surprising, his vague promise not to support other bills is notable, as Mr. Trump told lawmakers last month that he would sign any immigration bill that Congress sends him. Republican leaders have said Congress should only pass legislation that Mr. Trump would sign, but how flexible the president would be was a key question for lawmakers.

The president’s answer to that question came as one of the bipartisan coalitions in the Senate closed in on a deal that the members believe would get 60 votes, setting up a clash between a large number of members from both parties and the Republican leadership, led by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Graham said there is “growing consensus” around a two-pronged approach, in which protections would be extended for roughly 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought as children, in exchange for the full $25 billion for the president’s proposed border wall. He said addressing other proposals has become “politically toxic,” ever since a White House immigration meeting where Mr. Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries.”

Asked about Mr. Trump’s veto threat, Mr. Graham said, “Well, then, we won’t go very far. Then you’ll have three presidents who failed. You’ll have Obama, Bush and Trump.”

The White House position was announced as the Senate began debate on immigration, which allows senators to build legislation from a blank slate on the Senate floor.

Other proposals with bipartisan support on Capitol Hill take a narrower approach than Mr. Grassley, extending protections for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and bolstering border security. But those bills do not include the tough changes to immigration law that Mr. Trump backs — and most Democrats strongly oppose.

The statement is likely to make deliberations on Capitol Hill far harder. The president ended an Obama-era program protecting young, undocumented immigrants, known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but gave Congress six months to find a legislative alternative. That deadline is now three weeks away.

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The Grassley bill includes several measures to increase border security, including increasing the use of radar and tower-based surveillance, sensors and drones mostly along the Southwest border and increasing the number of border patrol agents. The National Guard would also be used to help constructs border fencing and operate some of the surveillance equipment.

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