Text
of White House Statement on Immigration Priorities
Here is the full statement on immigration
priorities issued by the White House late October 8.
The immigration-priority list is vague on several issues, such
as the scale of the border wall. The list also does not include many popular
reforms, such as the large-scale repatriation of illegal aliens, or a reduction
to the annual inflow of H-1B, OPT and L-1 white-collar outsourcing workers.
The list does include several features that would help
Americans, including a reduction in family chain-migration and a legal
requirement that companies use the E-verify system to check the
eligibility of job applicants.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IMMIGRATION POLICY PRIORITIES
Executive Summary
The Trump Administration is ready to work with Congress to
achieve three immigration policy objectives to ensure safe and lawful
admissions; defend the safety and security of our country; and protect American
workers and taxpayers.
BORDER SECURITY: Build a southern border wall and close
legal loopholes that enable illegal immigration and swell the court backlog.
- Fund and
complete construction of the southern border wall.
- Authorize the
Department of Homeland Security to raise and collect fees from visa
services and border-crossings to fund border security and enforcement
activities.
- Ensure the safe
and expeditious return of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and family
units.
- End abuse of our
asylum system by tightening standards, imposing penalties for fraud, and
ensuring detention while claims are verified.
- Remove illegal
border crossers quickly by hiring an additional 370 Immigration Judges and
1,000 ICE attorneys.
- Discourage
illegal re-entry by enhancing penalties and expanding categories of
inadmissibility.
- Improve
expedited removal.
- Increase
northern border security.
INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT: Enforce our immigration laws and
return visa overstays.
- Protect innocent
people in sanctuary cities.
- Authorize and
incentivize States and localities to help enforce Federal immigration
laws.
- Strengthen law
enforcement by hiring 10,000 more ICE officers and 300 Federal
prosecutors.
- End visa
overstays by establishing reforms to ensure their swift removal.
- Stop
catch-and-release by correcting judicial actions that prevent ICE from
keeping dangerous aliens in custody pending removal and expanding the
criteria for expedited removal.
- Prevent gang
members from receiving immigration benefits.
- Protect U.S.
workers by requiring E-Verify and strengthening laws to stop employment
discrimination against U.S. workers.
- Improve visa
security by expanding State Department’s authority to combat visa fraud,
ensuring funding of the Visa Security Program, and expanding it to
high-risk posts.
MERIT-BASED IMMIGRATION SYSTEM: Establish reforms that
protect American workers and promote financial success.
- End
extended-family chain migration by limiting family-based green cards to
include spouses and minor children.
- Establish a
points-based system for green cards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers.
ESTABLISH MERIT-BASED REFORMS TO PROMOTE ASSIMILATION AND
FINANCIAL SUCCESS
END CHAIN MIGRATION: Limit family-based green cards to spouses and
the minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
- Pro-worker
immigration reforms would end chain migration to begin providing lawful
permanent resident status based on merit, not family connections, and
would promote assimilation, financial independence, and upward mobility.
- Most low-skilled
immigration into the United States occurs legally through our immigrant
visa system, which prioritizes family-based chain migration.
- Each year, the
United States permanently grants green cards to more than 1 million
people, many of whose sole basis for entering the United States is family
ties.
- Chain migration
has accounted for more than 60 percent of immigration into the United
States over the last 35 years.
POINT-BASED SYSTEM FOR MERIT-BASED IMMIGRATION: Establish a
point-based system for awarding green cards that protects U.S. workers and
taxpayers, encourages assimilation, and ensures the financial self-sufficiency
of newcomers.
- Only 1 out of
every 15 immigrants to the United States are admitted on the basis of
skills.
- More than half
of all immigrant households use one or more welfare programs.
- Decades of
low-skilled immigration has suppressed wages, fueled unemployment, and
strained Federal resources.
ELIMINATE THE “DIVERSITY VISA” LOTTERY: Every year, through the
“diversity visa” lottery, the United States awards 50,000 green cards at random
to foreign nationals, many of whom have absolutely no ties to the United
States, no special skills, and limited education.
- The “diversity
visa” lottery is susceptible to fraud and is costly and time intensive for
the State Department to implement.
- The lottery
initiates new streams of permanent immigration when the lottery winners,
many of whom previously had no ties to the United States, are subsequently
able to bring over their extended relatives through chain migration.
SET THE NUMBER OF REFUGEES AT AN APPROPRIATE LEVEL: While the
United States is a world leader in accepting refugees and recently has gone
beyond historic averages, the refugee ceiling needs to be realigned with
American priorities.
- Historically,
the United States has resettled more refugees than has the rest of the
world combined.
- One study found
that for the price of permanently resettling one refugee within the
country, the United States can help 12 refugees resettle in safe zones
closer to their home regions.
- By better
focusing U.S. refugee admissions on the most genuine claims and enhancing
our screening processes, we will help combat fraud in the program, enhance
our Nation’s ability to welcome refugees, and aid in their assimilation to
the American way of life.
SECURE THE BORDER BY DETERRING AND SWIFTLY REMOVING ILLEGAL
ENTRANTS
COMPLETE CONSTRUCTION OF THE BORDER WALL: Build a southern border
wall and authorize the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to raise fees from
the processing of immigration-benefit applications and border-crossings to be
used for security and infrastructure.
- A meaningful
physical barrier on our southern border is vital to prevent infiltration
by cartels, criminals, traffickers, smugglers, and threats to both public
safety and national security.
- In 2006,
Congress passed legislation to secure the border with a double-layer fence
but the promised barrier was not constructed.
- The inability to
spend immigration fees on core law enforcement functions impedes security
on both the southern and northern borders.
ENSURE PROMPT REMOVAL OF MINORS & RELATIVES CROSSING BORDER
ILLEGALY: Ensure the swift return of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and
family units by amending current laws that require authorities to release them
en masse into the United States.
- Every year, tens
of thousands of illegal aliens – some traveling with their parents – are
caught after illegally crossing the border, only to be quickly released
into our country. This is one of the largest loopholes in U.S. border
security.
o Approximately 38,500 UACs and 71,500 members of
family units have been apprehended at the southern border this fiscal year –
the vast majority were released.
- Under current
law, UACs from countries other than Canada and Mexico are exempt from
expedited removal.
- Because of these
loopholes, few UACs who illegally enter the country are ever returned
home.
o The number of UACs removed in FY 2016 represented
approximately 4 percent of all UACs released into the country that same year.
END ASYLUM ABUSE: Tighten standards (including the “credible
fear” standard), impose penalties for fraud, and ensure applicants are not
released while their claims are verified.
- Chronic asylum
fraud and loopholes allow illegal immigrants to gain quick and easy entry.
- Lax legal
standards for claiming asylum has led to a backlog of 270,000 affirmative
asylum cases with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and 250,000 in
the Immigration Courts.
- Misguided
judicial decisions have prevented the removal of numerous criminal aliens,
while also rendering those aliens eligible to apply for asylum and other
forms of relief from removal.
REDUCE MASSIVE COURT BACKLOG THAT CRIPPLES BORDER SECURITY: Expand
our capabilities to deal with the ongoing crisis of illegal border crossings
through expedited removal.
Border security will be impossible as long as we have an
immigration court backlog of over 600,000 cases, preventing the removal of
illegal border-crossers. It takes an average of 682 days to complete a
single immigration case. Proper tools to improve our border security
include:
o Expanding and strengthening the expedited removal
process;
o Hiring an additional 370 Immigration Judges and
1,000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys;
o Establishing performance metrics for Immigration
Judges; and
o Discouraging
illegal re-entry by enhancing penalties and expanding categories of
inadmissibility.
ENFORCE IMMIGRATION LAWS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
ENFORCE IMMIGRATION LAWS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
STOP “SANCTUARY CITIES”: States and localities that
refuse to cooperate with Federal authorities should be ineligible for funding
from certain grants and cooperative agreements.
- While
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) values its law enforcement
partners at the State and local levels, there are hundreds of
jurisdictions across the country that do not honor requests from ICE to
hold criminal aliens who already are in state and local custody,
threatening public safety.
STRENGTHEN IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT: Hiring
an additional 10,000 ICE officers and 300 Federal prosecutors to handle
immigration cases will allow law enforcement agencies to uphold our laws and
protect public safety and national security.
- There are nearly
one million aliens with final orders of removal across the country.
o Yet ICE has only 6,000 Enforcement and Removal
Operations (ERO) officers to cover an immigration system that issues tens of
millions of temporary visas every year.
- In addition,
authorizing and incentivizing States and localities to enforce immigration
laws would further help ICE with its mission, and make all communities
safer.
END VISA OVERSTAYS: Increasing overstay penalties and ICE’s
enforcement tools will help ensure that foreign workers, students and visitors
respect the terms of their temporary visas.
- Visa overstays
account for roughly 40 percent of all illegal immigration in the United
States. In Fiscal Year 2016, 628,000 aliens overstayed their visas.
END “CATCH-AND-RELEASE”: Correcting judicial interpretations that
have eroded ICE’s authority to keep aliens in custody pending removal, and
making detentions mandatory for criminal aliens, will end the practice of
catch-and-release and improve community safety.
- A 2001 Supreme
Court decision requires ICE to release certain removable aliens, including
violent criminals, within 180 days if they have not been deported and
there is no significant likelihood of removal in the reasonably
foreseeable future.
- In Fiscal Year
2017, 1,666 criminal illegal aliens have been released from ICE custody
because of the above-mentioned 2001 Supreme Court decision.
PROTECT AMERICAN WORKERS: Preventing employers from
hiring illegal alien labor, and displacing U.S. workers, will improve job
opportunities and raise wages for Americans.
- The failure to
enforce our immigration laws has produced lower wages and higher
unemployment for American workers.
- We can provide
relief to the American workforce by requiring the use of E-Verify and by
expanding the definition of unlawful employment discrimination to
specifically include the displacement of U.S. workers by nonimmigrant
workers.
STOP VISA FRAUD: The State Department and Department of Homeland
Security need the funding and flexibility to detect and counter rampant visa
fraud.
- Expand the State
Department’s authority to collect and use fraud prevention and detection
fees to combat all types of visa fraud and create a fee mechanism to fully
fund the Visa Security Program to facilitate its expansion to all
high-risk visa-issuing posts.
October 9, 2017
So it's the White House that's being unreasonable about a DREAMer deal?
To hear the press tell it, President Trump is making unreasonable demands by asking for a deal to allow the illegal aliens known as DREAMers to stay in the U.S. In fact, he's making tradeoff demands so outrageous that no Democrat could possibly say yes to them. His real aim in asking for tradeoffs must be to scupper the deal.
Get a load of these headlines:
White House Makes Hard-Line Demands for Any 'Dreamers' Deal –New York Times
Now, wait a minute. Hold on. Trump wants tradeoffs for a deal to allow the DREAMers to stay, and somehow asking for tradeoffs, any tradeoffs, is anathema? Are Democrats, the party of smoke-room politics, incapable of making a tradeoff? Or is it they who just don't want one?
Bear in mind that if Democrats feel that strongly about chain migration rights, keeping the border unguarded, avoiding E-Verify, and all the other things they say are deal-breakers from the Trump camp's proposed tradeoffs, they are free to keep those things and let the DREAMers get deported to the countries of their foreign citizenship as the six-month window expires. It's up to them, because a DREAMer deal is hardly something Trump owes them. Their intransigence suggests they may in fact be weighing whether the DREAMers are worth it. Because if Democrats really care as much as they say they do about DREAMers, then it should be a no-brainer for them to cut a deal and to give Trump any tradeoff he wants.
What's unreasonable here is that they think Trump should just give them what they want without any compromises from the. To the press, the Democrats' shibboleths are sacred, while Trump's priorities are expendable. The activists Democrats take their marching orders from are even more adamant and explicit. Here's one just in via email from something called DREAM Action Coalition:
** STATEMENT **Stephen Miller's Nationalist and White supremacist Agenda Will Not Be A Basis For Any Immigration DealWashington, D.C. - On Sunday, Donald Trump unveiled his list of immigration policy demands in exchange for a deal to protect Dreamers who were covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration (DACA). Cesar Vargas, Esq. co-director of the Dream Action Coalition issued the following statement:" We are always open to a serious discussion with the White House on modernizing our outdated immigration system. However, we will not tolerate a deal that essentially helps one group of immigrants only to persecute another group, specially refugee children from Central America escaping violence. The White House's immigration principles aka Stephen miller's nationalist and white supremacist agenda will not be a basis for any deal. We have the American people on our side, we have the numbers on our side, we have both Republicans and Democrats on our side and we will continue push for a clean Dream Act with no strings attached."
They forget that Trump ran for office on a promise to restore rule of law to the immigration system, and he won the presidency on that platform in a nationwide vote. His obligation to the voters is every bit as immutable as the Democrats' is to their much smaller constituencies. The only way Trump can legitimately sign off on a DREAMer deal is if he can promise the skeptical and previously lied-to voters that the immigration system is restored and the mess will never happen again. That is what the tradeoffs are intended to achieve. The only way the minority-party Democrats should be able get what they want is to give in on other things.
It's called compromise.
And it should be a compromise if all sides are serious. The average voter, recall, doesn't have a dog in this fight. He or she isn't going to benefit in any way from a DREAMer amnesty. On the political spectrum, only Democrats will benefit, because DREAMers, once they achieve citizenship, will pretty much all vote Democrat. So there is nothing in amnestying DREAMers for voters, the GOP, or Trump, unless there are things these voters asked for, too.
Yet the press is shaping the coverage so as to claim that Trump wants to scupper the deal with unreasonable demands. There is no examination of what may be really going on, which is that keeping the status quo may really be the Democrats' plan.
After all, Democrats benefit from illegal immigration. They've gained congressional seats and electoral college votes as illegals have filled districts in parts of Southern California, even though illegals are not permitted to vote. (In some districts along the 710 corridor, the voting rate is about 10% due to high illegal alien counts.) Democrats also benefit from the expansion of government – as illegals fill schools, hospitals, jails, food stamp offices, and Departments of Motor Vehicles offices, and even put wear on highways and infrastructure. And high numbers of illegals in any of these establishments open the door to more federal funding, often a transfer of funds from other parts of the country. More government = more bureaucrats = more federal funding = more Democrats. Democrats also benefit from chain migration – in championing illegal immigrants, they scarf up votes from their legal relatives already in the states.
Now, weighing that, against just giving the DREAMers residency status over all the other people waiting in line to emigrate legally, might be a bridge too far for them. But Democrats should state that openly and make it known that illegal immigration is too good for them as it is to cut a deal on the DREAMers. Since they won't, they pursue a no-compromises policy and expect President Trump to just cave in to everything they demand while giving nothing. Presumably, Trump can avoid bad press and sob stories in return as his reward.
It's not a deal any reasonable president should fall for. Trump probably won't. And the media should look at that issue as it is with honesty.
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