President Trump has assailed Democrats for refusing to negotiate on his proposed immigration reform plan. “[Democrats]…oppose this deal, they aren’t serious about DACA-they just want open borders,” the president wrote on Twitter earlier today.
Polling shows nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes DACA, fully secures the border, ends chain migration & cancels the visa lottery. If D’s oppose this deal, they aren’t serious about DACA-they just want open borders. https://t.co/XDMcDOr9vM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2018
The president has proposed an immigration deal that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, includes $25 billion for border-wall funding, and ends chain migration as well as visa lottery programs. Democrats have so far opposed that deal criticizing the steps of ending the immigration programs as too conservative.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly also weighed in, claiming that it was now Donald Trump who has claimed the moral high ground on immigration broadly, and DACA specifically.
“I can’t imagine men and women of good will, who begged this president to solve the problem of DACA, and as generous as that four pillars have been, I can’t imagine they would vote against it. I mean this is more than they could have imagined. And I would offer that if before the champions of DACA were members on one side of the aisle, I would say right now the champion of all people who are DACA is Donald Trump — but you would never write that,” Kelly said, speaking to reporters.
Kelly touted the higher-1.8 million number of undocumented immigrants who would get legal status under the Trump plan vs. the 690,000-number of DACA recipients that, up until the president releasing his plan, was being negotiated.
“There are 690,000 official DACA registrants and the president sent over what amounts to be two and a half times that number, to 1.8 million,” he said. The difference between [690,000] and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their [expletive deleted], but they didn’t sign up.”