Immigration Reform?
Senate preps for immigration debate while Trump lobs accusations
The Senate is preparing for an open debate on immigration Monday, a process complicated by the uncertainty of President Trump's position on the subject. Though Trump's campaign rhetoric favored hard-line policy, most vividly the border wall proposal, in office he has both promised to sign any "bill of love" Congress creates and rejected multiple congressional proposals.
The White House said Saturday the administration is working with Senate allies on a plan to approve 4 million stalled green card applications while making a path to citizenship for 1.8 million people illegally brought to the U.S. as children. These changes "would effectively make up for the cuts in other immigration categories for about 13 years," an unnamed White House official told the Los Angeles Times. So far, the compromise is unpopular among immigration activists at both ends of the spectrum.
About 800,000 of the 1.8 million who arrived in America as kids were previously protected from deportation by the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In a tweet Saturday, Trump accused Democrats of using DACA recipients for political gain:
A 2010 bill, the DREAM Act, similar to then-President Obama's 2012 DACA executive order, would have passed both houses of Congress, but it did not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.