Trump heightens hurdles for deal on immigration
Democrats saw divisiveness, not unity, in address
WASHINGTON — The chances of a bipartisan immigration deal benefiting so-called Dreamers looked more remote the day after President Donald Trump made his pitch in his State of the Union speech, as Democrats saw not an overture but an escalation of divisive rhetoric.
Before a joint session of Congress and national television audience, Trump presented his offer as a compromise. It would pair a 12-year path to citizenship for 1.8 million immigrants brought to the country illegally as children with billions of dollars for “a great wall on the southern border,” other border security measures and far-reaching limits on legal immigration.
Trump’s proposals to go beyond illegal immigration and sharply cut the number of legal entries form the biggest barrier to a deal. Democrats and outside experts say his plan could cut legal immigration by 40 percent or more over the next couple of decades, mostly by reducing the ability of citizens and legal permanent residents to sponsor their parents, siblings and adult children. That’s too steep a price to pay to provide legal status to people that Trump has said he wants to help, to treat “with heart,” Democrats say.
Senators have a week to draft a bill on immigration, if they follow through on an earlier agreement made to provide funding for the government after the weekend shutdown in mid-January.
At that time, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Democrats and a few Republicans that he would allow debate on an immigration bill immediately after the Senate votes next to fund the government; spending authority expires again Feb. 8.
Two bipartisan groups of lawmakers have been meeting this week, but prospects for a breakthrough look dim, especially after Trump’s speech.
Trump spent significant time during his 80-minute address on the dangers of immigration. He linked gang violence to legal and illegal immigration, and he introduced among his invited guests the four parents of two teens killed by the Salvadoran gang MS-13 in 2016 on Long Island.
Many Democrats bristled at Trump’s words and his use of the young girls’ tragic deaths to push for restrictions on legal immigration.
“The president presents himself as generous toward Dreamers, but he’s holding them hostage to the most extreme anti-immigrant agenda in generations,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wednesday.
In his speech, the president said he had presented a “fair compromise — one where nobody gets everything they want, but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs.”
He listed his demands for security measures. Those include restricting one longtime visa program and ending another. He would limit family unification visas to citizen-sponsors’ spouses and minor children, reducing the number of legal immigrants admitted each year by hundreds of thousands. Trump also would end a so-called diversity visa lottery, which allows about 50,000 people annually to resettle in the U.S., largely from Eastern Europe and Africa.
In years past, similar changes to immigration law were considered by Democrats but only if they were combined with a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally.
Conservative Republicans have been unwilling to accept such a broad “amnesty,” as they call it, even in exchange for sweeping immigration restrictions. But some have indicated a willingness to support Trump’s proposal benefiting the young immigrants as long as his proposed limits are part of the deal.
“In the last 50 years, this is the best chance we’ve had to fix our archaic immigration,” Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said Wednesday on Fox Business News.
Perdue said “we want to” give “a certainty” to the young immigrants. “But the only reason that makes sense is if you close the door to this happening again,” he added, by limiting future illegal immigration with the restrictions Trump has proposed.
Trump spent more time on immigration than any other topic in his address and mostly highlighted what he sees as the dangers of both illegal and legal immigration.
While Trump sought to sound conciliatory, he also had some divisive language.
“My duty, and the sacred duty of every elected official in this chamber, is to defend Americans — to protect their safety, their families, their communities, and their right to the American Dream,” Trump said. “Because Americans are dreamers too.”
That line was met by silence among Democrats, some of whom had invited Dreamers as their guests.