DREAM Act Portal Forum - Amid border outcry, Trump team to unveil 600-page immigration plan

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner pitched President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members Tuesday on a 600-page legislative proposal to end legal loopholes that impact border enforcement and establish a new merit-based system for legal immigrants seeking to enter the United States.

The draft legislation comes months after the White House first announced that Kushner planned to create an internal task force with the singular goal of developing a serious and comprehensive proposal related to immigration and border security — something that Trump can point to as he makes his case for reelection over the coming months.

“We’ve worked with roughly 25 Senate offices in consultation on this legislation, so there’s significant Republican buy-in,” said an administration official briefed on the proposal. “The purpose of today is to bring the Republican party behind a very serious proposal that we can all get behind, and from there we can hopefully engage in negotiations.”

Kushner will brief Republican leaders Tuesday afternoon on the proposal, which the White House is billing as a starting point and not “something that will pass in its current form,” the official said. The text of the legislation has yet to be released to congressional offices or the public and does not have any Democratic co-sponsors.

Kushner has worked closely with Stephen Miller, one of the president’s most hawkish advisers on immigration, officials across the Department of Homeland Security and bipartisan offices on Capitol Hill.

“The one advantage we have is we actually worked with DHS and we brought in the experts to see what you need to fix loopholes,” the administration official said. “Obviously a 100 percent fix is difficult, but getting to 90 percent is something we think we can do.”

To persuade GOP members to coalesce behind Kushner’s effort will likely require a series of adjustments to the current proposal, which is not expected to address illegal immigration beyond the border security component or to modify current levels of legal immigration.

The White House hopes an economic assessment of Kushner’s plan by the Council of Economic Advisers will serve as a major selling point for skeptics of the proposal who worry that it would undermine job opportunities and wages for American workers. “The CEA scored this and found that it would be a significant tax boon — roughly $580 billion — and that it would boost wages,” the official said.

The White House is likely to face significant resistance from congressional Democrats, who have escalated their criticism of Trump’s immigration policy in recent weeks after visiting overcrowded and unsanitary detention centers for migrant children and adults near the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has also come under fire for small-scale deportation raids carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last weekend.

“It should be a sign to us that today’s Catholic Gospel reading is the Good Samaritan, where Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves and treat them with mercy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote on Twitter Sunday. “Trump’s ICE raids today tear families apart — the opposite of mercy. #FamiliesBelongTogether #KnowYourRights.”

Even more challenging for White House officials seeking to gain Democratic support for an immigration proposal is the current controversy enveloping Capitol Hill that stems from Trump’s stream of disparaging tweets about a group of progressive congresswomen. During a press conference Monday, the four Democratic women — Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley — encouraged their colleagues to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, who they accused of “openly violating” his constitutional oath of office.

“Right now, the president is committing human rights abuses at the border,” Omar said. “I believe we are in a pivotal moment in our country. The eyes of history are watching us.”

The White House official declined to provide a timeline for the release of Kushner’s plan, nor would the official identify which Democratic offices worked with Trump’s son-in-law on the proposal.

Restrictionist immigration groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, which participated in listening sessions with Kushner earlier this year, have rejected previous outlines of the administration’s latest plan.

“If they propose something that doesn’t cut the numbers [of legal immigration] but just moves to a merit-based system, pretty much uniformly Democrats and all of the parts of the media that are allied with the Democratic Party will come out against it wholeheartedly… It’s not clear for them how it’s a winning strategy to have their own side divided and the other side unified,” CIS director of research Steven Camarota told POLITICO in May.

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The White House says it's drafted a 600 page immigration bill, and lined up 10 GOP Senators to co-sponsor it.

The bill reportedly builds on the blueprint President #Trump and Jared Kushner announced in May, addressing border security and legal immigration, but not DACA.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...n-plan-1417024

I actually like npr article better

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The White House announced Tuesday that it has quietly drafted a 620-page immigration bill and has lined up 10 Republican senators to co-sponsor the measure should it be introduced, according to a senior administration official involved in the process.

This builds on a blueprint President Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner announced in May, which addressed border security and legal immigration but didn't deal with the millions of people currently in the country illegally, including young people known as dreamers.

"In Washington, I find a lot of people are very quick to say what they are against," Kushner said during a Cabinet meeting at which he shared details of the plan. "But it's very important for us to articulate as an administration what we're for, but to do it in detail. And we're not afraid to put out details because we think that this proposal is a very very good proposal that really is great for America."

The push for a new immigration bill comes just days after Trump ignited a furious controversy by tweeting that four non-white members of Congress should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." All four members are American citizens and three of the four were born in the United States.

When the immigration blueprint was first announced, it was greeted with mixed reviews and a heavy dose of skepticism about its political prospects. After that initial burst of energy, Congress seemingly ignored it and the White House stopped talking about it.

But Kushner said it remained a top priority.

"The Trump administration, despite what some people say, believes in safe, legal immigration and is against illegal and random migration," he said.

During the Cabinet meeting, Trump threw his support behind the Kushner-led plan.

He called it "compassionate and the "the best of everything."

"Our country really has a tremendous immigration gap," Trump said, calling the current system a "maze of complexity."

This bill, which hasn't been introduced and may not be, was drafted in consultation with about 25 Republican Senate offices and a handful of House Republicans, the official said.

The senior administration officials said the process included adding items, taking others out and tightening language.

"Now we are at a place where we feel like the bill is substantially complete," the officials said.

It's not clear how having legislative language will get this proposal any closer to becoming law, but the senior administration official said officials will be meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday to discuss that.

McConnell has said that any major immigration effort needs to be bipartisan, but Democrats are unlikely to agree to sweeping border security measures without some kind of protections for the so-called Dreamers, brought to the country illegally as children, or the larger 11 million people in the country illegally.

Distrust between of the White House from Democrats is at perhaps its highest point as the administration comes under fire for its handling of detained immigration children, planned immigration sweeps and the racially-tinged comments about several progressive lawmakers.

But getting Democratic support is not necessarily the president's objective. White House officials recognize the challenges gaining support from Democrats, but a senior administration official said part of the goal is unifying key factions of the GOP about a path forward.

Supporters say it also should give Republicans something to rally around for the 2020 elections. And Trump said as much in the Cabinet meeting, saying that "if it doesn't get passed, it's a campaign issue."

The senior administration official touted support its received from conservative groups and pundits, including Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham. He bragged that they were able to work with twenty-five Senate offices and a dozen House offices without any any leaks.

"While this plan doesn't make every needed change or fulfill every campaign promise, it offers the country a viable path forward in the face of Democrat immigration extremism," said RJ Hauman, the government relations director at FAIR, which advocates for stronger immigration enforcement.

The plan includes an updated legal immigration system that replaces allowing entry to low-skilled workers with a merit-based system that prioritizes immigrants with special skills. It would also strengthen border security, increase interior enforcement and tighten asylum procedures.

The proposal would also include installing a nationwide federal employment verification program, known as E-Verify, federal program to check whether new employees were legally allowed to work. Conservative groups have long pushed for the program, but big business has lobbied against it. But that may be changing.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbied Congress against a national E-Verify mandate during the Bush and Obama administrations, has since welcomed the idea as long as it includes an improved guest worker proposal. The National Association of Manufacturers also supports mandatory employment verification system like E-Verify.

When asked about the political realities of a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, a fast-approaching August recess, budget fights and an election year on the horizon, the official returned to what has been a common posture for the Trump White House.

"People in Washington think very conventionally all the time, and immigration is something that has been troubling people for 25 years. Everyone can say what they're against, but nobody can say what they're for," the official said.

The goal for this document, the official argued, was "seeing if we can unify the Republicans around this proposal."

The official readily admitted that the White House could put this out and nothing will happen at all. And "this will be something that we talk about during the election, but at least the president will be on record saying, 'This is what I am for' in a very detailed capacity."

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/16/74221...medium=twitter