Thread: Trump expected to call for immigration meeting amid stalled talks

Trump expected to call for immigration meeting amid stalled talks

01/04/18 03:10 PM EST



President Trump is expected to call for a bipartisan meeting next week to break through a stalemate on immigration that threatens to derail a yearlong government funding bill, a key GOP senator said Thursday.

Republican and Democratic negotiators say they’re still far apart on a prospective deal to protect an estimated 800,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children from deportation in exchange for stronger border security measures. The Obama-era program that had been protecting them, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), was rescinded by Trump.

“It’s pretty clear to me that the president wants to get this addressed and is willing to call a meeting early next week, a bipartisan meeting to work through the differences,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas) said

Thursday after meeting with Trump earlier in the day.

Democrats are insisting on an immigration deal to protect so-called Dreamers as part of a yearlong spending package but lawmakers are currently in a stalemate, with Democrats balking at Republican proposals to beef up border security.

Two GOP negotiators, Sens. James Lankford (Okla.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.), say the talks have gone backward over the last few weeks.

“Unfortunately, our discussions on border security and enforcement with Democrats are much further apart, and that is key to getting a bipartisan deal on DACA,” Lankford and Tillis said in a joint statement.

The negotiators said that unless Democrats give ground on border security and related immigration reform issues, "we cannot accomplish the solutions our country needs and many families deserve."

"More work remains ahead,” they said in their statement.

Trump in a meeting with Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he wants lawmakers to end chain migration, scrap the diversity visa lottery program and secure the southern border as part of a deal with Democrats to protect young immigrants from deportation.

In September, the president moved to rescind the DACA program and gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative replacement for the program.

Trump told GOP lawmakers at a meeting Thursday that chain migration, which gives preferential treatment to the relatives of legal U.S. residents, is “a total disaster which threatens our security and economy” and that the visa lottery program, which allows immigrants from countries that do not send a lot of immigrants to the U.S., is “bad for our economy and bad for our security.”

He also said “we need a physical border wall.”

Lankford, who attended the meeting, later clarified to reporters that Trump has privately expressed willingness to be flexible on the wall.

“People want to paint that it’s some 2,000-mile long, 30-foot-high wall of concrete. That’s not what he means and not what he tries to say,” Lankford told reporters after sitting down with the president.

“There’s going to be border fencing in some areas, there’s going to be vehicular barricades, there’s going to be technology, there’s going to be greater manpower in some areas,” he added.
Lankford said Trump has been clear “in private.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...-stalled-talks

An amnesty deal will never be a benefit to Americans. It will be a broken promise from President Trump. In my opinion, promises of mandatory E Verify, ending chain migration, ending the visa lottery, some funding for border security is not worth an amnesty to a group of largely young, social justice radicals from what I have seen. Amnesty comes immediately but what about the other. Many of these individuals are well connected to amnesty pushing organizations, including to George Soros funded groups, who will not stop at a small amnesty. The fundamental transformation of America needs more of these agitators. Democrats crave the voters. Republicans are just dumb to help the Chamber of Commerce, businesses, globalists, others while destroying their country and committing political suicide.


The DACA recipients, the larger group of so called "dreamers can at a moment's notice be activated to demonstrate at local, state, federal facilities. They are taught what to chant, what to write on posters, what to write on postcards, what outfits to wear in the halls of your state legislature (example, caps and gown with signs of professions). They make calls to representatives of the American people to sway votes for them and for in state tuition, drivers licenses, amnesty. It will not end with a DACA amnesty.

Illegal aliens have powerful allies. They are pawns to be used, even by their families. Those given amnesty will never cease demanding amnesty for all. They will continue to oppose tightening immigration policies and they oppose limiting refugee resettlement, extreme vetting, etc.

There is still a porous border, there is still birthright citizenship. There is power in numbers. There should be a trickle of people getting across our borders but there are still thousands getting across.