Immigration plan has foes on left and right
WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top Democrat dismissed President Donald Trump’s immigration proposal as a “wish list” for hard-liners on Friday as the plan drew harsh reviews from Democrats, immigration activists and some conservatives.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expressed satisfaction that Trump had clarified his immigration goals, which have befuddled members of both parties and hindered progress in Congress. The White House plan unveiled Thursday offers a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants living in the U.S. illegally in exchange for major restrictions on legal immigration and $25 billion in border security.
In a pair of tweets, Schumer expressed relief that Trump “finally acknowledged that the Dreamers should be allowed to stay here and become citizens,” a reference to those young immigrants. But he said Trump’s plan “uses them as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for for years.”
Trump shot back with his own tweet, accusing Schumer of complicating the process. “DACA has been made increasingly difficult by the fact that Cryin’ Chuck Schumer took such a beating over the shutdown that he is unable to act on immigration!” he wrote.
The opposition was shared by some on the right, however, including conservative figure Richard Viguerie, who labeled the White House proposal the “Trump Amnesty Disaster” in an email. Roy Beck, the president of NumbersUSA, which seeks to limit legal immigration, called it a framework for “a mass amnesty.”
Trump-aligned candidates from Nevada and Virginia rejected his notion of a path to citizenship outright. A loyal media ally, Breitbart News, attacked him as “Amnesty Don.” And outside groups that cheered the hardline rhetoric that dominated Trump’s campaign warned of a fierce backlash against the president’s party in November’s midterm elections.
“There’s a real potential for disaster,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the far-right Center for Immigration Studies.
The public scolding is aimed at a president who has changed course under pressure before. But senior White House officials cast the plan as a centrist compromise that could win support from both parties and enough votes to pass the Senate.
The plan would provide a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 690,000 younger immigrants protected from deportation by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — as well as hundreds of thousands of others who qualify for the program but never applied.
Trump announced last year that he was doing away with the program, but he gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a legislative fix.
The plan would not allow parents of those immigrants to seek lawful status, the officials said.
In exchange, Trump’s plan would dramatically overhaul the legal immigration system. Immigrants would only be allowed to sponsor their spouses and underage children to join them in the U.S., and not their parents, adult children or siblings. The officials said it would only end new applications for visas, allowing those already in the pipeline to be processed. Still, immigration activists said the move could cut legal immigration in half.
It would end a visa lottery aimed at diversity, which drew Trump’s attention after the New York City truck attack last year, redirecting the allotment to bringing down the existing backlog in visa applications.
It also includes other measures, such as more money for enforcement and proposed rule changes that would make it easier for the government to deport other groups— measures that advocates argue trade the fate of some immigrants for others.