What is it going to take to restart the US Government after the shutdown, and what does it all mean?

[Final-Fan]

DarthVolod said:

Final-Fan said:

At a glance, those articles repeat the information I cited that Trump's proposal would allow about the same number of people to qualify as Obama's DACA program did.  The "three times as many" claims come from comparing the number of people who could hypothetically enroll against the number of people who have actually enrolled in reality.  Trump's proposal has a qualification total similar to Obama's. 

Of course, that may not be what you are referring to.  Very well, you have cited sources.  Please remind me:  in what way do those sources support the claim that Trump's offer was "better than anything Obama ever offered"? 

The numbers I saw were 1.8 million given citizenship path over 12 year period and up to 4 million more based on chain migration. So potentially around 5.8 - 6 million or so all together given a path to full citizenship ... seems very generous to me considering what little was being asked. 

Obama's DACA protected 1.8 million from being deported while giving work authorization, it did not give full amnesty. Trump is offering a path to citizenship for those 1.8 million as well as an additional 4 million via chain migration ... just from a number standpoint that is a better deal, not to mention legalizing them; saving them from having to worry about DACA being removed in the future. 

Obama didn't offer a path to citizenship, I thought, because it was not within his powers.  I daresay Trump is not more open to the path to citizenship than Obama was.  If Trump could offer it in conjunction with being able to convincingly argue that he is able to do better with passing reform through the Republican-held Congress, then sure, on that basis he can give Democrats a qualitative improvement over what Obama could do without Congress. 

But aside from this arguable qualitative difference, the proposal for the former DACA group would be quantitatively very similar.  So "from a number standpoint", no significant improvement is to be had here based on what you've said for that group.  On the other hand, regarding the additional 4 million you claim from the chain migration, earlier I said "the chain migration offer is just a return to status quo AFAIK, and thus (if I am right) cannot be better than Obama by definition."  Is this correct or incorrect?  Legalization is obviously irrelevant here because we are already talking about legal immigration.  Is the chain migration offer something new, or just "we won't take it away"? 

And while we're at it, is the proposal to remove chain migration even going to reduce quotas, or just redirect the numbers to a different qualification system?