Trump warns: no deal to protect Dreamers without cash for border wall – By Lauren Gambino (theguardian.com) / Dec 29 2017
Donald Trump demanded on Friday that any deal to resolve the fate of young undocumented migrants must be paired with funding for a wall along the southern US border.
It was not immediately clear if Trump’s intervention would derail attempts to find a compromise on the issue, or negotiations over government funding.
Spokespeople for Democratic leaders said they looked forward to resuming “a serious negotiation” on immigration when Congress returns next week.
Trump tweeted his demand among a volley of similarly strident messages, the morning after he spoke to the New York Times in a surprise and wide-ranging interview that included remarks on immigration and Daca. Shortly after his morning tweets, he left his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for one of his golf courses.
There are about 700,000 so-called Dreamers, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children. In September. Trump announced that he was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca, a policy implemented by Barack Obama in 2012 that allowed Dreamers to come out of the shadows to study and work legally in the US.
Trump placed the fate of the young immigrants squarely in the hands of Congress, giving lawmakers until 5 March to find a legislative solution.
On Friday, the president wrote: “The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no Daca without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc. We must protect our Country at all cost!”
Trump staked a similar position in his New York Times interview: “I wouldn’t do a Daca plan without a wall. Because we need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall.”
“Chain migration”, referred to in Trump’s tweet, is a family-based immigration policy that allows naturalized citizens and certain immigrants to petition for relatives to come to the US. Trump also called for the elimination of the Diversity Visa Lottery, a state department program that helps citizens of countries with historically low rates of immigration to come to the US.
Trump has been vocal on both issues in the wake of terror attacks in New York.
Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old from Bangladesh accused of detonating a bomb in a subway tunnel earlier this month, came to the US in 2011 on a visa available to relatives living in the country.
Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old from Uzbekistan accused of killing eight people with a pickup truck on a bike path in October, was allowed into the country on a visa obtained through the lottery program in 2010.
“They take the worst people in the country, they put ‘em into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States…’” Trump said. “We’re gonna get rid of the lottery, and by the way, the Democrats agree with me on that. On chain migration, they pretty much agree with me.”
The wall, one of Trump’s central campaign promises and the centerpiece of his hardline immigration platform, is a non-starter for Democrats. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer ,and House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, are resolutely opposed to any immigration legislation or government funding plan that includes funding for a wall.
Democrats are, however, under increasing pressure to pass legislation that would permanently shield Dreamers from deportation.
Immigration advocates and liberal groups are furious with lawmakers who left Washington last week despite having promised to force a vote on the issue before the end of the year. Some groups have vowed to retaliate against Democrats who supported a spending bill to keep the federal government open that did not address the Dreamers issue.
A bipartisan group of senators are scrambling to find a compromise. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Trump critic and Republican member of the working group who is a longtime proponent of immigration reform, has said that plan will receive a vote next month.
Pelosi and Schumer, along with the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, are due to meet the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, on Wednesday to discuss the year’s priorities, including immigration, according to two sources familiar with the plans for meeting.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/29/trump-dreamers-daca-immigration-border-wall
PB/TK – Let’s make a charity funding telethon outta it.. Come on everyone, for every $199.99 you get a ‘Brick in the Wall’ with your name on it, that will be properly placed by a ‘DREAMer’ of your choice
