The biggest political crisis facing the Congress in the next 90 days is how to resolve the Dreamer issue.

Dreamers are those illegals allegedly brought to the United States before they were 16 years old and who have lived here continuously since 2007. It might affect as many as 700,000 individuals and is emotionally charged because they are the only group of illegals who can be considered victims in their own right. Many of them–allegedly–have never known any home but the United States, don’t speak the language of the home country, etc.

What makes the problem so difficult is that if citizenship is in the plan, then it will not be a one-time thing for this group of illegals. It will be part of US immigration law which means we have just created a magnet for illegal immigration.

There are competing visions for how to fix this problem. The worst possible solution is that being proposed by the so-called Gang of Six. This is a group of six senators–Jeff Flake (R-AZ.), Dick Durbin (D-Douchebag), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Robert Menendez (D-Free Hookers). This line-up should scare the living hell out of anyone who is actually concerned about controlling illegal immigration.

What they are offering: $1.6 billion for a border fence and $1.2 billion to enhance border security. Important note: none of this money goes to ICE for interior enforcement, for E-verify, or for immigration judges, or for anything else that is not on the border.

What they are demanding:

Amnesty for all persons who fall within the DACA eligibility guidelines regardless of whether they have registered. This seems to me to reward people who didn’t care enough about being in America to cooperate when they had the chance, but that’s just me.

Dreamers would get conditional permanent resident status and after two years of work or military service they would become full-fledged resident aliens.

Dreamers would be eligible for citizenship after 10 years of residency.

Some criminal convictions would be waived if “in the national interest.”

Dreamers would have to pay federal tax liability. Not sure how this works as many, if not most, have probably been working using a fake social security number. I read this as some meaningless sop thrown to us rubes by slick guys who think they’re getting one over on us.

It gives “temporary” protected status to the families of Dreamers. This should be a deal breaker because it sets up yet another one of these fights a couple of years from now when another Gang of [fill in your favorite number] decides it is totally immoral that the families of Dreamers not be allowed to dream themselves into resident alien status. While I am broadly sympathetic with the plight of the Dreamers, the idea of rewarding illegals for being, well, illegal makes me gag.

They claim to end chain migration (yes, I know, saying chain migration or anchor baby makes you a racist) by forbidding Dreamers from sponsoring their parents. This is just another shiny object to distract you. They can still sponsor non-Dreamer siblings and the proposal is sort of a form of chain migration itself as it allows their parents to stay.

It increases the number of spouses and children of green card holders who are eligible for their own green cards.

It revamps the visa lottery system by awarding half the slots based on merit. The other half go to persons with temporary protected status…like the parents of Dreamers.

They are being too clever by half. They had the chance to make a small tweak of the immigration system to fix a single problem. They couldn’t do that. They chose to increase the number of recipients of an amnesty from about 700,000 to probably close to 2 million. They had a chance to show they could bargain in good faith and they chose not to.

This is a terrible deal. Trump has indicated he’s not interested in what they’re selling and let’s hope he’s convinced to stay that way.