Trump immigration plan draws criticism from top Senate Dem

AP

By Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, and Alan Fram

January 26, 2018

Trump immigration plan draws criticism from top Senate Dem

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, 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.”

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 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.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plan before its release.

Under the plan, recipients could have their legal status revoked due to 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 immigrants are of “good moral character.”

Trump ended the DACA program in September, setting a March 5 deadline for Congress to provide new legal protections. The officials said their plan is the only one Trump will sign and that, if a solution is not found, former DACA recipients who come into contact with law enforcement will be subject to deportation.

Trump earlier this month had deferred to a bipartisan group in the House and Senate 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 African countries — the White House decided to offer its own framework.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others had also complained the president had failed to sufficiently lay out his priorities, leaving them guessing about what he might be willing to sign. One official said the Thursday release represents a plan for the Senate, with the administration expecting a different bill to pass the House.

McConnell in a statement thanked the president for providing the outline and said he hoped members from both parties would look to it “for guidance as they work towards an agreement.”

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.”

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an immigration hard-liner, called Trump’s plan “generous and humane, while also being responsible” and said he’d work toward its passage. He said that besides protecting DACA recipients, “It also will prevent us from ending up back here in five years by securing the border and putting an end to extended-family chain migration.”

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.”

Democrats were also raging. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blasted the plan as “part of the Trump administration’s unmistakable campaign to make America white again.”

Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., urged Republicans to join together with Democrats to reach a bipartisan alternative.

“Dreamers should not be held hostage to President Trump’s crusade to tear families apart and waste billions of American tax dollars on an ineffective wall,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the White House was using DACA recipients “as bargaining chips for sweeping anti-immigrant policies.”

Immigration advocates have also blasted the plan as a “white supremacist random note.”

“Proposals that seek to trade one set of lives for another just cannot be a starting point for this,” Katharina Obser of the Women’s Refugee Commission said on a Friday call.

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com