I dunno man, Ghot is old and must have had dozens of prostate exams by now.



Democrats really aren't united in their immigration policy and they let the dumb fucks shout from the rooftops. I still think that Bush had the most pragmatic immigration policy and we fucked up in hindsight. Now all those people are going to become citizens under Biden :-/

What was unique about Bush's policy?

Having a guest worker program would have allowed us to track who is in the country from a national security perspective and it would have allowed us to continue paying them shit wages. They wouldn't have become citizens either and would have been forced to go home every now and then. It was the best of both worlds IMO.

That is one perspective.

If you are in the middle class though, it is slavery that pushes down your wages.

Agriculture wages shot up like 30% under Trump.

Fair. I don't consider strawberry picking to be middle class though. That's dirt fucking poor and I really don't want Americans to do those types of jobs. What's next, white people picking cotton?

Who says that there wouldnt have been copious amounts of illegal immigration on top of the guest worker program? And who says that liberals wouldnt have started pushing for citizenship for these guest workers?

Regarding the "become citizens under Biden"-part: I'm not so sure about that. Afaik, Biden cant grant them citizenship via EO, he would need Congress, and there will be too much resistance from the GOP and also presumably from purple state blue dog Dem senators (Tester, Sinema, Manchin, perhaps Kelly). And they'd need to nuke the filibuster first to have any chance at getting such a bill passed anyway.

What Biden probably can do is gut immigration enforcement to the point where it's almost non-existant. He can also open the flood gates really wide for asylum seekers and so on. But large-scale amnesty which goes beyond the DACA kids (a very sympathetic group of illegal immigrants whose economic contribution is clearly positive) imho wont be politically feasible. But even that would be really bad for the GOP. Even if some naturalized DACA kids would be receptive to other parts of the GOP platform, a messaging of "vote for us, we're gonna cut your taxes (oh, and we would like to deport your parents)" just wont cut it, thus, citizenship for the DACA kids would effectively mean 2 million additional voters for the Dems.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 28 2021 07:56am

2 years? try 4 months, or 20 working days with recesses.

On paper between Sept 24th and February 4th, sure. Which essentially worked out to be 20 working days .
You know what he was able to pass in that time frame? the ACA.

Let's look at the actual timeline.

Obama was sworn in on January 20, 2009 with 58 Senators. Would've been 59, but Al Franken’s wasn't seated for 7 months due to Republicans contesting it. So that's still 58.
4 months after Obama was sworn in, in April, Arlen Specter switched sides. Franken still isn't seated, but now Obama actually has 59.
1 month later Byrd was out of commission due to being hospitalized. That drops it down to essentially 58. 59 on paper.
At this point, Kennedy hasn't cast a vote since April. So 59 on paper, but still 58 in practice.
In July, Franken was sworn in. That would've made the magical 60, even though Kennedy hasn't voted in months. Byrd was back, but still not fully engaged.
In August, Kennedy died, Paul G Kirk served from Sept 24 2009 to February 4 2010 but then Brown won, dropping the number back down to 59 on paper.
Also noting that Lieberman was counted in the "filibuster proof majority" because he caucused with the democrats, but was an independent that joined the republican filibuster many times
And after his stunt with the ACA, you'd he hard pressed to actually count him.
Also couple that with newly elected blue dog democrats.

So you're looking at essentially 6 bills or nominations that they could've rammed through in the middle of republicans filibustering the motion to proceed on just about everything.

That's not a golden opportunity by any stretch of the definition.

blackx doesn't do actual arguments, just talking points. he doesn't know these things, he just uncritically regurgitates the propaganda he's fed. "obama wasn't obstructed, he was just lazy and didn't get anything done". "hE hAD tHe TriFeCtA!!1!"

There might have been but if you need cheap labor, who are you going to hire? A guy with a worker permit or someone under the table? At the end of the day, if the cost of labor is the same, you'll choose the legal guy. Obviously, there's no guarantee that they'd issue the correct number of permits but I think it would be a step in the right direction. I think guest workers COULD apply for citizenship eventually. What's wrong with that? The wait time I think would have been over a decade.

Biden can't unilaterally make them citizens and I didn't mean to imply that. I'm just pointing out that the concept of a guest worker program is dead so they are going to become citizens or keep the status quo. The writing is on the wall that they will become citizens en masse as opposed to a controlled flow that likely would have occurred under Bush.

It's still fundamentally wrong to claim, like snipa did in his post to which I was replying, that Obama was "blockaded before he ever took office". I might have been wrong on the duration of time for which Obama had a filibuster-proof majority, but he was still in the strongest position to pass legislation in decades.

1.: he did have the opportunity to pass a piece of legislation which couldnt be filibustered. To the best of my knowledge, this was the only such time window in decades. Reagan, Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, Trump, Biden - they all didnt get this opportunity.
2.: even without a filibuster-proof majority, Obama was very close for most of those first two years in office. He only needed to win over 1 or 2 GOP senators to get past the filibuster.
3.: he had the strongest mandate of any president over the past 25 years and very good approval ratings at the start of his presidency.

Having a filibuster-proof trifecta is a historical anomaly, not the normal standard by which we should compare presidents. Compared to historical standards, Obama was in an unusually strong position to get things done, far stronger than what his predecessors and successors had at their disposal. What he got done with it was an insufficient stimulus bill which led to one of the most sluggish economic recoveries on record, a shitty healthcare bill which inflamed his opposition and left his supporters unsatisfied, and a regulatory bill for the financial sector which was overly complicated and effectively strengthened the market position of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan etc. against their smaller competitors.