Wall Street Journal
By Julia Bykowicz and Rebecca Ballhaus
February 23, 2018
President Donald Trump revived his attacks on family-based immigration and accused congressional Democrats of abandoning young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, in a speech to a crowd of conservative activists.
In a campaign-style speech that lasted more than an hour, the president said the diversity lottery visa, which randomly awards visas to 50,000 people annually from underrepresented countries, lets undesirable people into the U.S., and said “chain migration” enables legal immigrants to sponsor many undeserving relatives for U.S. visas.
“You think they’re giving us their good people?” he asked of diversity visa lottery countries. “So we pick out people. Then they turn out to be horrendous, and we don’t understand why. They’re not giving us their best people, folks…. I don’t want people coming into this country with a lottery. I want people coming into this country based on merit.”
He reiterated his plan to build a wall along the southern border. And he blamed Democrats for having “totally abandoned” an Obama-era program that protects young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Mr. Trump ended the program last year but gave Congress until March 5 to enact legislation protecting the so-called Dreamers.
“They don’t even talk to me about it,” he said of Democrats, calling them “totally unresponsive.”
Democrats have rejected that claim, saying that Mr. Trump’s inflexibility in negotiations and his initial decision to end protections for Dreamers are responsible for their current plight.
“It’s clear to everyone but President Trump that it was he who forced the DACA issue when he ended the program,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a statement. “Democrats have been willing to negotiate for months, and have forged several bi-partisan deals, but his refusal to take yes for an answer led to his partisan plan that only got 39 votes. Now he’s headed in the same direction on gun safety. If he continues down this path, his calls for bipartisanship will ring hollow.”
A bipartisan immigration plan backed by most Democrats and some Republicans this month failed to garner the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate, while legislation based on the president’s own immigration plan also was rejected, by a greater margin. The bipartisan plan would have included border wall funding and a path to citizenship for Dreamers, while Mr. Trump also wanted limits on immigration based on family ties and an end to the diversity visa lottery.
In his remarks Friday, the president whipped up the crowd with talk about the congressional elections this year, urging those in the room to avoid becoming “complacent” because they are happy Republicans hold the presidency.
The president’s appearance for the second year in a row at the Conservative Political Action Conference mimicked his own campaign rallies. The crowd chanted “Build the Wall” as he discussed his border plans and “Lock Her Up” in reference to his onetime Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton. Toward the end of the address, Mr. Trump took several minutes to read “The Snake,” a poem he cited frequently while campaigning, casting it as an anti-immigration allegory.
Two years ago as Mr. Trump was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, he skipped CPAC amid reports that attendees were organizing protests against him, viewing the New Yorker who had long been registered as a Democrat as insufficiently conservative.
He acknowledged that rocky history with the group Friday. “I think now we’ve proved that I’m a conservative,” he said as the standing-room-only crowd cheered.
Mr. Trump also spoke about meeting with victims of last week’s Parkland, Fla., high-school shooting. A 19-year-old who had been expelled killed 17 former classmates and school employees.
He emphasized his desire to arm teachers as a way to curtail school shootings, saying repeatedly that he would protect the Second Amendment while addressing school safety.
“Time to make our schools a much harder target for attackers,” Mr. Trump said. He said his plan could have saved lives in Parkland. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.”
He briefly touched on his plans for improved background checks and mental health requirements, proposals that could face opposition from gun-rights supporters. The president didn’t mention the idea he previously floated to raise the minimum age for purchasing some guns to 21 years old, a proposal the National Rifle Association has rejected.
He reiterated that schools should not be “gun-free zones,” and said military bases, also the target of shooters in recent years, shouldn’t be, either.
“We’re going to look at that whole military base gun-free zone,“ he said. “If we can’t have our military holding guns, it’s pretty bad.”
U.S. military bases generally allow only security guards and other law enforcement personnel to carry weapons.
Base or unit commanders have additional limited discretion to allow specially designated service members to carry weapons and only for a specific purpose or period.
White House officials said Mr. Trump’s speech would focus on new sanctions against North Korea. But Mr. Trump didn’t mention the country until moments before wrapping up his address.
He said he wanted to tell the crowd that he had just announced new sanctions against North Korea, a package that targets shipping and trading companies as a way to further cut off the foreign-currency revenues being used to prop up the nuclear-armed regime.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), on stage after Mr. Trump, estimated that 90% of what the president said was “totally unscripted.” How did he know? He said he was backstage watching the script on the teleprompter.
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