White House Meets with Senators to Plan Amnesty for illegal aliens
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly met Tuesday with a group of two Democratic and five GOP Senators who are pushing for a large, unpopular and pro-business amnesty in early January, according to news reports.
Politico.com reported the meeting, which also included two pro-American GOP Senators:
At a Tuesday afternoon meeting with nearly a dozen senators deeply involved in immigration policy, White House chief of staff John Kelly pledged that the administration will soon present a list of border security and other policy changes it wants as part of a broader deal on so-called Dreamers, according to people who attended the meeting. The plan could come in a matter of days, senators said …
President Donald Trump laid down his popular immigration promises during the 2016 election and issued another set of principles in October. Those promises include no amnesty for years, while the October principles demanded that any congressional deal stop the hugely expensive practice of chain-migration and also end visa lottery. Trump’s officials and deputies — including Kelly — are also emphasizing those goals in their public and private statements.
If chain-migration is ended, immigration would fall by roughly 50 percent. That change would help push up wages for Americans and help get nine million sidelined Americans into jobs. The change would also slow the nation’s politically chaotic slide into diversity and cultural conflict, and force Democrats to shift their electoral emphasis from immigrants’ concerns back towards Americans’ priorities.
But Trump has also said he wants to get an amnesty for at least some of the younger illegals, despite his campaign-trail opposition to a wage-lowering amnesty.
Democrats hope to persuade Trump to back an amnesty and so betray his supporters before the 2018 elections...