Trump’s plan on Dreamers seen as wider
It would let 1.8 million stay, but pare legal immigration
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is proposing a plan that provides a path to citizenship for 1.8 million of the so-called Dreamers, tighter restrictions on legal immigration and $25 billion in border security, the White House said.
Senior White House officials offered a preview of Trump’s immigration framework Thursday, casting it as a compromise that could pass in the Senate. The proposal represents a reversal for the president, who once promised to eliminate a program enacted under former President Barack Obama that protects illegal aliens who were brought to the U.S. as children. He later urged lawmakers to extend the program but maintained that he was not considering citizenship.
The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program currently covers roughly 690,000 of those younger illegal aliens — about half the number who qualify for the program, according to independent estimates. Trump’s plan would expand that by adjusting some of the requirements, officials said.
In exchange, Congress would create a $25 billion trust fund to pay for a southern border wall, dramatically increase immigration arrests, speed up deportations, crack down on people who overstay their visas, prevent citizens from bringing their parents to the United States, and end a State Department program designed to encourage migration from underrepresented countries.
It would also end the diversity visa lottery program, which drew Trump’s attention after the New York City truck attack last year, and redirect the annual allotment to reducing the backlog in visa applications.
White House officials said the enhanced security measures were nonnegotiable parts of their plan. They warned that if no deal is reached, deferred-action recipients will face deportation when the program fully expires March 5.
Recipients could have their legal statuses revoked because of criminal behavior or national security threats, the officials said, and eventual citizenship would require still-unspecified work and education requirements — and a finding that the aliens are of “good moral character.”
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plan before its release.
Democratic lawmakers and activists said they will refuse to accept any proposal that requires them to forsake the well-being of other illegal aliens, including the parents of the Dreamers, in order to secure the future of the young illegal aliens.
On Wednesday, Trump said he was open to a pathway to citizenship for the program recipients. “We’re going to morph into it,” Trump told reporters. “It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years.”
Trump had previously ruled out the idea of citizenship for the Dreamers, saying in September: “We’re not looking at citizenship. We’re not looking at amnesty. We’re looking at allowing people to stay here.”
Trump earlier this month had deferred to a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers to craft an immigration proposal, saying he would sign whatever they passed. But as talks on Capitol Hill broke down — in part because of controversy Trump ginned up using vulgar language to describe some other countries — the White House decided to offer its own framework.
The release follows on concerns raised by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that the president had not sufficiently laid out his priorities. One official said the Thursday release represents
a plan for the Senate, with the administration expecting a different bill to pass in the House.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute said it believes the largest share of the White House’s 1.8 million people who’d be eligible for citizenship — 1.3 million — are people who meet all of DACA’s eligibility requirements. Those include years in the U.S., their ages now and when they entered this country, and whether they have high school or equivalent educations.
Another 400,000 are people who would be eligible for DACA protection except for their educations. And 100,000 more are people who are under age 15 — the minimum age allowed for most people requesting protection under the program.
RAMPING UP PRESSURE
The president’s legislative proposal is designed to exert maximum pressure on Democrats, who are desperate to protect the DACA recipients, but who fiercely oppose the conservative immigration policies embraced by hard-line, anti-immigration activists.
The strategy would work only if the Senate fails to reach a broad, bipartisan accord on an alternative: legislation that would protect the Dreamers, bolster border security, but reject the most draconian aspects of the White House’s proposal.
“This is a negotiation,”
said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “I welcome White House input.”
But a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted the plan as part of a “hateful anti-immigrant agenda.”
Drew Hammill accused White House aide Stephen Miller, a staunch opponent of illegal immigration, of “trying to ransom the lives of innocent Dreamers for a $25 billion anti-immigrant wish list.”
“The White House strategy of moving the goal posts every time the president isn’t paying attention continues to complicate this process,” he said in a statement.
On the Republican side, McConnell thanked the president and his administration.
“I am hopeful that as discussions continue in the Senate on the subject of immigration, members on both sides of the aisle will look to this framework for guidance as they work towards an agreement,” he said in a statement.
Doug Andres, a spokesman for House Speaker Paul
Ryan, echoed the sentiment saying: “We’re grateful for the president showing leadership on this issue and believe his ideas will help us ultimately reach a balanced solution.”
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he supports the citizenship pathway Trump described. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., called Trump’s words “positive” and said Trump’s description “gives us a better sense” of his views, but added, “We have a long way to go yet.”
But some of Congress’ more conservative members seemed unwilling to open the citizenship door for the Dreamers.
“DACA itself didn’t have a pathway to citizenship,” said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who battled Trump in 2016 for the GOP presidential nomination. “So I think it would be a profound mistake and not consistent with the promises we made to the voters to enact a pathway to citizenship to DACA recipients or to others who are here illegally.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said he supports a more conservative, more sweeping immigration bill proposed by House members, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., which has won strong support from House conservatives. Ryan has promised to push for support for that measure.
Meanwhile, immigration activists blasted the plan. Lorella Praeli, with the American Civil Liberties Union, called it “a hateful, xenophobic immigration proposal that would slash legal immigration to levels not seen since the racial quotas of the 1920s, eliminate legal immigration channels for African countries, and spend $25 billion for a harmful, wasteful border wall and an increase in Border Patrol and ICE agents.”
“The White House proposal is clearly an effort to sabotage bipartisan talks on the issue by continuing to put issues on the table that are non-starters,” she said.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of senators calling itself the Common Sense Coalition gathered in the office of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, on Thursday to discuss the immigration issue. At issue is the scope of the bill. Some senators want to draft a narrow bill that bolsters border security and codifies protections now extended to DACA recipients, which do not include a path to citizenship.
Others say the legislation should take Trump up on his offer of citizenship, but to do that, lawmakers might have to take the rest of the White House’s deal.
“Do we simply codify what DACA is and extend it out over a period of time, or do we try to go farther than that as the president is suggesting?” asked Rounds, “If you do that, you have to address the issue of chain migration, and that’s where it becomes a lot more complicated.”
Many senators indicated little appetite for the more hard-line approach.
“If you start putting all these highly charged toxic issues, it’s just not going to work,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
But hard-liners, apparently led by Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, say the White House’s strategy needs to be considered — and that means four elements: Dreamers, border security and a wall, chain migration and an end to the diversity visa lottery.
“Everybody wants to alter reality in a way that sort of suits their needs,” Cornyn said. “But the reality is the president said there has to be four pillars. People just need to accept that and deal with it.”
But a spokesman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted the plan as part of a “hateful antiimmigrant agenda.”