White House demands imperil ‘Dreamers’ deal
Immigration law changes, border wall among proposals
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration revealed a sweeping set of hard-line immigration demands Sunday night — including the building of a wall on the Southern border and major changes to the legal immigration system — as tradeoffs for legislation to protect the so-called Dreamers, a move that could kill prospects for a deal to protect roughly 700,000 young people now facing possible deportation.
The White House proposals would curb the ability of American citizens to sponsor family members to join them from abroad, upending decades of immigration policy, and put strict new limits on asylum claims. The list also includes increased money for border security and mandatory use of the government’s E-Verify system for employers to ensure that workers they hire are legal residents.
Also on the list is a tighter crackdown on socalled sanctuary cities, localities that decline to cooperate fully with federal immigration authorities. The list also included measures to more quickly remove minors who have crossed into the U.S. from Central America in recent years seeking asylum.
The proposal would reduce the number of permanent resident visas issued, lower the number of refugees accepted, restrict family-based green cards to spouses and minor children and create a pointbased system for legal immigration. Administration officials would not say how much legal immigration would be reduced under the plan, but the impact would clearly be significant.
Democrats quickly denounced the proposals, saying they did not come close to what President Donald Trump and congressional Democratic leaders had discussed last month at the White House when they struck a tentative deal for legislation to protect young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children.
“This list goes so far beyond what is reasonable. This proposal fails to represent any attempt at compromise,” Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said in a statement. The wall, specifically, was off the table, Schumer and Pelosi have said.
Trump announced last month that he would end the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that provided a temporary legal status for the young immigrants, meaning that starting March 5, when the program expires, tens of thousands of them each week will face losing their jobs and possibly being deported.
Ever since Trump announced that he and “Chuck and Nancy” had discussed a possible legislative deal to protect the young immigrants, hardline elements of his administration have worked with immigration restrictionists in Congress to derail the effort. The demands released Sunday reflected a wish list of their proposals, many of which are not only opposed by Democrats, but go beyond what a majority of congressional Republicans would back. If Trump insists on each of the proposals, the move would likely kill any prospect of legislation.
Whether the proposals truly reflect Trump’s views, however, remains uncertain — he advocated immigration restrictions during his campaign, but also repeatedly has said that he does not want to see the “Dreamers” deported.
Several critics of the White House plan emphasized Sunday the hope that the proposals reflected only the views of advisers such as White House domestic policy chief Stephen Miller and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and that Trump would eventually back away from them.