Here’s a surprise for anyone who’s read my last few columns; this one isn’t pro-Republican or necessarily pro-Trump.

The reader might assume I love all aspects of Donald J. Trump, but that’s incorrect. I just call ‘em as I see ‘em. On the immigration issue, he has conceded more than I would like, and I probably speak for most of his base.

I assess this compromise as good negotiation though. He was never going to deport the otherwise law-abiding “Dreamers,” so he appears to cave on that issue in order to get what he really wants—his border wall and Congress tightening legal immigration.

That’s just politics.

In other words, Trump is doing something quintessentially presidential: He is taking on his own base in an effort to do something big and bipartisan for the good of the nation. That is what great leaders do.

It may be the case that both sides are using the Dreamers as leverage; that’s what I suspect.

It would be in character to claim President Trump has no love for any illegal aliens or foreigners in general; He ran for office claiming to care about Americans for a change; he has no desire to be the moral or spiritual leader of the world. His agenda promotes economic success for Americans, which is especially appealing to anyone who’s lost his job to foreign completion or any sort of globalism.

This isn’t really news.

The news is the Democrats are disingenuous; they really don’t care about the Dreamers either. Once again, we saw this past week that the Democrats want the issue rather than the dream. The only interest Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have in the Dreamers is to use them as pawns in a larger game of identity politics.

Last week, not one, not two, but FOUR immigration reform proposals failed to pass the Senate after Trump made it clear he would not sign a bill unless it included funding for a border wall, end “chain migration,” and stopped the visa lottery system. Trump has been very vocal about what he will and won’t sign — it’s not like this is a secret.

Why, you ask didn’t the Democrats vote for a proposal that provided a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrant Dreamers, nearly tripling the Obama-era DACA program. The White House called the 1.8 million “a dramatic concession by President Trump 60 votes in the Senate.”

“Democrats are very good at Spanish,” Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, D-Il., stated. “One word: mañana — tomorrow. . . They talk about how they are there for immigrants, but when it counts and when it matters they usually put their party before their principles in terms of our immigrant community.”

If the Dreamers don’t end up getting the path to citizenship that Trump has offered, it will be for one reason only: because Democrats care more about using illegal immigration to bash Donald Trump than they do about actually helping Dreamers.

If long-winded Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats really cared about the Dreamers they would have voted with Trump. However, that would have been political suicide for them. So the Dreamers will now be sacrificed on the altar of brutal, winner-take-all politics.

As for Nancy Pelosi; why all the theater?

She was playing to her ultraliberal base that she was 100% committed to the Dreamers, though her party caved to the Republicans in the latest “shut down the government” budget fight. Her antics were to create plausible deniability in the next election. She could claim a victory, and actually did, for garnering a promise for action on the Dreamers—but no real legislation.

The truth is the Dems don’t want to actually fix our country’s broken immigration system. They want to keep our borders porous and to neuter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from doing its job and deporting those who overstay their visas or enter without one because Democrats want people to enter this country illegally.

A porous border creates political pressure for amnesty. They also want to keep these people permanently disenfranchised — forever resigned to live in the shadows, wholly dependent on the mercy of the Democratic Party.

The truth is the elites of both parties want more unskilled, even illegal immigrants. The Democrats want them hooked on government benefits and to eventually turn them into loyal voters. Fat cat Republicans want to exploit their cheap labor to maximize profits. It’s the little guy American in the middle who’s squeezed out, and up until the Trump election both parties only gave lip service to.