President Donald Trump will only support an immigration bill that meets his four specific demands in any fix for the DACA program, White House officials told reporters on a background briefing call.
The president has repeatedly said that any bill codifying Obama-era protections for illegal immigrants must be accompanied by funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and an end to both chain migration and the diversity visa lottery program.
Officials stressed that the White House had already made major concessions. The legislative framework the White House sent to Congress endorsed a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and allowed many on the chain migration waiting list to keep their spots.
“This is a moment of great peril for the Democratic party,” one White House official said of Democratic lawmakers steadfast opposition to any of the White House’s proposals. “Democrats say the needs of donors are more important than the needs of DREAMERS,” the official continued, explaining that continued low skilled mass migration would simply displace newly legalized DACA recipients in the work force without a reformed immigration system.
An official stressed that mass low skilled legal immigration is “great for multi-national corporations, not American workers.”
The officials and the president endorsed an immigration proposal Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that largely tracks with the administration’s legislative framework.
“The Grassley bill accomplishes the four pillars of the White House Framework: a lasting solution on DACA, ending chain migration, cancelling the visa lottery, and securing the border through building the wall and closing legal loopholes,” Trump said in a Tuesday morning statement ahead of debate.