President Trump unveiled a new immigration plan on Thursday in the White House Rose Garden, only to be met by outrage from liberals and ambivalence…
President Trump unveiled a new immigration plan on Thursday in the White House Rose Garden, only to be met by outrage from liberals and ambivalence from conservatives.
The reaction underscored how troublesome the politics of immigration is for the administration, especially when it departs from the simpler — if polarizing — path of the president’s calls to build a border wall.
The new proposal urges a shift from an immigration system based primarily around family relationships to one based around education and job skills. It was largely the brainchild of Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
But the plan is noticeable as much for what it does not contain as for what it does — and for its slim chances of making it through Congress while Democrats control the House.
It includes no details on what is to be done about the millions of people living in the United States without authorization, nor any specifics about a guest-worker program or the fate of young people covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was ended by Trump.
“The plan doesn’t address DACA! How can you not address that?” said one source in Trump’s orbit, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Asked about that point by a reporter Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded: “Every single time that we have put forward, or anyone else has put forward, any type of immigration plan that has included DACA, it’s failed. It’s a divisive thing.»
Sanders added that the new plan was “focused on a different part” of the immigration issue.
Trump loyalists fear that the proposal is not hardline enough to please his #MAGA base, even as they tacitly acknowledge it stands little chance of winning over centrist or liberal skeptics of the president.
