Trump Wants $25B Border Wall for ‘Dreamer’ Protections

But as President Trump has repeatedly shifted his public statements on any immigration measure, congressional leaders have been increasingly anxious for more clarification on what the White House wants from an eventual bill. There is little good evidence that acts of massive restriction in the past-the deportation of some 500,000 Mexicans during the early years of the Great Depression or the end of the bracero program in the 1960s-resulted in better job prospects or higher wages for native-born workers.

Trump said the bill will also contain a pathway to citizenship for some “dreamers“, undocumented immigrants who were taken to the U.S.as children, after 10 or 12 years.

In the meantime, he said DACA recipients should not be anxious about being deported if their status expires. “Tell them not to worry”. “Why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems?”

However, the president’s first ever acknowledgement that DACA-recipients could find a pathway to citizenship may have moved the issue forward for those who were under the impression, one created by the president himself, that their presence in the US was under threat.

A White House memo to Congress outlining President Trump’s plan for a bipartisan immigration reform deal calls for the termination of chain migration and visa lotteries, but more than doubles the number of “Dreamers“.

Immigration negotiators on Capitol Hill were listening closely Wednesday night when President Donald Trump opened the door to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.

But to get the 60 Senate votes to get a plan approved – a total that would require nine Democxrats if all 51 Republicans stuck together – Trump needs to convince the more skeptical partisans. There are certainly a lot of people we’ve heard from – lawmakers who are going to say, if this includes citizenship for DREAMers, I’m not on board.

“The president has indicated a willingness to extend citizenship to 1.8 million individuals as part of this immigration reform package”, Miller said.

Still, Sen. Michael F. Bennet, Colorado Democrat, said the president’s move toward citizenship for Dreamers was encouraging.

The officials said that the plan will be delivered to the Senate with hopes that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would bring a bill to the floor the week of February 6, just days before a February 8 deadline for a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open.

“Yeah, I might do that”, Trump said of moving the deadline, which is March 5. Trump fought Cruz for the Republican nomination and won with a hardline immigration stance that rejected “amnesty” for anyone in the country illegally. “But if it’s within legalization of DACA, border security, and chain migration, and diversity visas, then I’d say they’re doing what was kind of agreed to in a bicameral, bipartisan way on January 9″.

On top of that, they’re asking for $25 billion for the border wall system.

“More than a third of DACA recipients reside in my district”, said US Representative Dan Newhouse.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to appear pro-immigrant again, saying that the Wall is “off of the table”, just days after he declared on the Senate floor that he had put it on the table to pass a deal with Trump. “But we will build it way under”. The administration is seeking to promote the migration of nuclear families by limiting family sponsorships to spouses and minor children only.

But in exchange, Trump was asking Congress to make future legal immigration more hard – and to shore up the Homeland Security Department’s toolbox and funding to crack down on the overall population of unauthorized immigrants, estimated at some 11 million including Dreamers. He was asked by an audience member if children in the country illegally should be allowed to attend USA public schools.

“There’s widespread fear that if Trump capitulates to the Democrats and fails to deliver on his campaign promises on immigration, there’s not going to be any more campaign promises for the GOP to make in the future, because the base will inflict a scorched-earth policy in midterms”, Dane said, noting that his organization has “a longstanding position of opposing amnesty in any form, including the extension of the DACA protections”.