© MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty ImagesTrump inspects a border wall prototype in San Diego on March 13, 2018.
Yes, it's true - an Op-Ed piece by a fierce Trump critic in the liberal publication has urged Democrats to support the building of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Andrew Sullivan wrote last month that allowing construction of a wall is probably the first step in alleviating the crush of families trying to enter the U.S. illegally and how to handle them after being detained.
Admittedly, Sullivan does not believe a wall will truly work to stop illegal immigration. But he does believe that Democrats giving in to the biggest item Trump promised voters on the first day of his presidential campaign is a necessary first step of trying to fix what's causing the current border crisis.
Comment: Sounds like a pretty "woke" Democrat. That's like finding a unicorn!
Sullivan said allowing Trump to build the wall will not only allow Democrats to win some points with the middle class, it will also allow Democrats to negotiate for real immigration reform.
"So give him his f-g wall. He won the election. He is owed this," Sullivan said. "It may never be completed; it may not work, as hoped. But it is now the only way to reassure a critical mass of Americans that mass immigration is under control, and the only way to make any progress under this president. And until the white working and middle classes are reassured, we (Democrats) will get nowhere.
"Don't give it to him for nothing, of course. It should come with a full path to citizenship for all DACA immigrants ... But it should also go bigger: a legislative fix for Flores; massive new funding for detention facilities, humane family-friendly housing, and, above all, much more money for the immigration legal system, now completely overwhelmed by asylum cases. If Democrats can show they want to deal with the humanitarian problem as a whole, and are willing to compromise on the wall, they'll be in a much stronger position going forward than in the recent past."
Sullivan says if Democrats want to boot Trump out of the White House in 2020, they have to avoid the mistake Hillary Clinton made in the last campaign by labeling anyone who spoke against an "open borders" policy as a racist. He says employing a stance on illegal immigration that can be spun as compassionate while having the nation's best interest in mind is the recipe to a 2020 victory.
"The Democrats who are currently posturing are playing a good card badly. They give off the appearance, as Hillary Clinton did, of making no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, favoring de facto open borders, and calling anyone who disagrees with them a white supremacist," Sullivan wrote.
"Until they recognize that illegal immigration is a huge and legitimate problem, and until they propose a set of actual policy proposals to end it humanely and efficiently, they run the risk of another 2016 in 2020."
Sullivan is far from the first person to try and explain common sense to Democrats, but it would probably surprise a lot of Dems to learn just how many people actually believe it's smart and prudent for the U.S. to have some say over who comes into the country.
Legal immigration has played a big part in the success of the U.S., and illegal immigration is a tremendous drain on the country's resources. That doesn't seem like such a hard lesson to learn, but if Trump's critics are finally admitting it, then maybe Republicans are finally getting their point across.
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