World News Trump to spare U.S. ‘dreamer’ Canada stresses talks on NAFTA will involve all three members immigrants from crackdown
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) President Donald Trump’s administration plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, but will leave protections in place for immigrants known as “dreamers” who entered the United States illegally as children, according to official guidelines released yesterday.
The Department of Homeland Security guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that Republican Trump signed on Jan. 25.
Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2012 that protected 750,000 immigrants who had been brought into the United States illegally by their parents. Trump has said the issue is “very difficult” for him.
Trump campaigned on a pledge to get tougher on the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, playing on fears of violent crime while promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico and to stop potential terrorists from entering the country.
Trump’s planned measures against illegal immigrants have drawn protests, such as an event last week that activists called “A Day Without Immigrants” to highlight the importance of foreign-born people, who account for 13 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 40 million naturalized American citizens.
A banner declaring “Refugees Welcome” was posted on the base of the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of American acceptance of immigrants, before park rangers removed it on Tuesday, WABC television reported.
DHS officials, speaking on a conference call with reporters, said that although any immigrant in the country illegally could be deported, the agency will prioritize those deemed as posing a threat.
These include recent entrants, those convicted of a crime and people charged but not convicted. Some details of the guidelines were detailed in a draft memo seen on Saturday. HIRING MORE AGENTS Many of the instructions will not be implemented immediately because they depend on Congress, a public comment period or negotiations with other nations, the officials said. Mexican immigration officials immediately objected to part of the new rules.
The guidance also calls for the hiring of 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents and 5,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. The DHS will need to publish a notice in the Federal Register subject to review in order to implement one part of the plan that calls on ICE agents to increase the number of immigrants who are not given a hearing before being deported.
The new rules would subject immigrants who cannot show they have been in the country for more than two years to “expedited removal.” Currently, only migrants apprehended near the border who cannot show they have been in the country more than 14 days are subject to rapid removal. TORONTO, (Reuters) - Any talks to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement would involve all three member nations, a top Canadian official said yesterday, dampening speculation the United States might seek to sit down with Canada first and then Mexico.
“We very much recognize that NAFTA is a three-nation agreement and were there to be any negotiations, those would be three-way negotiations,” Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told a conference on the future of North America.
U.S. President Donald Trump - who says free trade treaties have cost countless thousands of American jobs - wants NAFTA to be renegotiated with a focus on cutting his country’s large trade deficit with Mexico.
Trump says he needs only to tweak trade ties with Canada, prompting one Canadian official to suggest to a newspaper that Washington would want to negotiate with Ottawa first. Mexico opposes the idea, which trade experts say is almost unworkable.
“NAFTA is a threeparty agreement and any conversation we have regarding that ... will be a three-party conversation; it has to be,” Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told reporters in Toronto after Freeland’s comments.
Mexican Economy Minister Guajardo Ildefonso earlier told the conference that the bulk of the NAFTA talks would have to be carried out on a trilateral basis to give investors confidence that the same set of investment rules applied everywhere.
Trump has revealed little about his intentions for NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, except that he wants large changes with Mexico.
The Mexican government expects the talks to start this summer, said Guajardo, who stressed several times how well Canada and Mexico had worked together in the past on trade.
Former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who helped launch the original NAFTA talks, dismissed the idea that Canada might abandon Mexico to its fate.
“This under-the-bus stuff is for losers, not for winners,” he told the conference.
Freeland noted that Trump’s choices for commerce secretary and trade representative had yet to be confirmed. “We all have to collectively be careful not to get ahead of ourselves,” she said.
One idea floating in Washington is that of a border tariff, which could hit Mexican exports.
“Nothing in the new NAFTA should be a step backward. We will definitely not include any type of trade management measures, like quotas, or open the Pandora’s box of tariffs,” Guajardo said. “That will be disastrous in any process moving forward.” For Ocean Going Vessels the opening lasts about
For Trawlers the opening lasts about The opening lasts for 1 1/2 hours