Trump action on young immigrants divides some GOP

MONROE, Georgia — Anthony Pham immigrated to the United States in 1982 from Vietnam and became a citizen five years later, after President Ronald Reagan signed an immigration law that sped the legalization process for millions of new Americans.

Now a business owner and proud Republican in Georgia's staunchly conservative 10th Congressional District, Pham says he supports maintaining legal status for young immigrants living in the United States illegally who were brought to the country as children.

“When they come here as children, they can become American citizens if they are good, not bad people,” Pham says of the 800,000 or so immigrants affected by President Donald Trump's decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Children Program (DACA) put in place during the Obama administration.

Trump says he's giving Congress six months to end the limbo status for these young immigrants. Yet Pham says that what Congress does — or doesn't do — won't change his support for the president or his congressman, outspoken conservative Jody Hice.

“I am Republican. I am with Mr. Trump,” Pham says, sitting in the courthouse square barbershop he's owned in Walton County since 1993.

Pham's view echoes across Republican congressional districts like Georgia's 10th, a wide expanse of small towns between Atlanta and Augusta. And it highlights the political conundrum facing deeply divided Republicans whom Trump has called on to craft some kind of legislative solution, giving them an election-year deadline.

The conservative voters who dominate here and in many other GOP districts profess varying degrees of sympathy for the immigrants affected by Obama's program and then Trump's reversal. But these voters also are convinced that illegal immigration is a drag on Americans' economic opportunity, and they want the Gop-controlled Congress to stand with a president they see as defending U.S. workers and the rule of law.

That means members of Congress have little incentive to risk angering core supporters with any legislation that can be branded as “amnesty.”

“What part of ‘illegal' don't people understand?” booms Elwood Suggins, an 82-year-old Trump backer in Walton County.

AP PHOTO BY BILL BARROW In this Sept. 6, photo, Anthony Pham, talks in his Monroe, Ga., barber shop. He became a U.S citizen in 1987, five years after he immigrated from Vietnam.