A congressional memo drafted by the Trump White House outlines a bipartisan immigration reform which calls for the scrapping of the visa lotteries, chain migration and doubles the number of DACA dreamers to about 1.8 million recipients.
The immigration plan would require representatives and senators alike to set up a trust fund of about US$25 billion to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, enhance security around the northern border with Canada.
President Trump is requesting additional to hire more immigration agents, judges and lawyers. Though the White House confirmed the final amount will be up for discussion, the president estimates the additional amount would be around US$ 5 billion.
Democrats have been pushing for a permanent legal status for the approximately 800.000 Dreamers trapped in limbo since President Trump rescind an Obama-era executive order protected them. In exchange, the Trump White House would provide a 10-12 year provisional path to citizenship for some 1.8 million undocumented migrants, including those eligible for DACA as well as recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
On Wednesday prior to his departure to Davos, Switzerland, Trump told reporters immigrants would ”morph into” citizens over the next decade should they meet certain requirements. ”If somebody’s work hard, if they’ve done a great job, it gives you an incentive to do a great job,” Trump said.
Immigrants will have a clearly stated requirement to work, study and live up to ”good moral character” in order to be eligible. Their status could be revoked in case of ”criminal misconduct or public safety and national security concerns, public charge, fraud, etc.”
The Trump administration seeks to promote the migration of nuclear families by limiting family sponsorships to minor children and spouses only. Trump is also urging lawmakers to put an end to the Visa Lottery and use those visas to bring in more high-skilled workers. Extended family chain migration will be halted by these changes.
Skeptical Democrats, wary of an inconsistent Trump aren’t too excited the memo. Addressing the Senate floor Thursday, Minority leader Charles Schumer said the administration has ”proven unreliable and wildly unpredictable. Within the course of hours, they say different things, I welcome when he says the right thing. But I know the next day he might be 180 degrees different. We’ve got to get him to sign something right after he says the right thing.”
A plan developed by a group of bipartisan senators have been previously rejected by the President. Leading to a 3-day shutdown of the US federal government. A spending bill was later passed by lawmakers to keep the government open until February 8, a little less than a month for the DACA program to expire. The political theatrics might earn Trump political capital as he might later take credit for making concessions but there are hardline supporters within his own party who are strict on immigration and might see the provisions of the memo as an amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Neba Benson,
BaretaNews Foreign Correspondent/Analyst
