Borderline thinking

Democratic operatives are unhappy to detect a growing view that their border policy amounts to lawlessness. The President's common-sense view is “We’ve got to straighten out our immigration laws.” Pressed to rebut this approach, the Center for American Progress has released a report arguing that Trump

has relied on the administrative discretion built into the immigration system to bypass real reform. That failure to substantially reform the immigration system, the report argues, actually undermines the rule of law—broken systems have cracks, after all, and with numerous immigration-related executive orders and proposed rule changes facing legal challenges in federal court, the president has shown himself willing to exploit them.

I find that passage difficult to parse. There's the opening question of what "real reform" is. Whatever it is, we're asked to believe that Trump is "bypassing" it by relying on "administrative discretion." Then, by bypassing "real reform," Trump is "undermining the rule of law."

Nope, still don't get it.  Let's try again:  how do we know he's undermining the rule of law?  Well, because the immigration system is broken.  It's the nature of broken systems to have cracks.  Trump is exploiting the cracks by issuing executive orders and rule changes, which his opponents are challenging in federal court.  See?

In the meantime, Trump's opponents don't have any public message on how they'd amend the immigration laws, other than to abolish them.  Given a choice between abolishing the border and straightening out (i.e., reforming) our immigration laws, voters do seem likely to go with Trump.  Whatever the opposition view is, it doesn't look like reform.  It looks like lawlessness.