President Donald Trump said he could consider a lenient approach towards young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children provided the Democrats and Congress support his plans for building a border wall and restrictions on immigration.
The Trump administration has discontinued the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era immigration reform that protected residents who entered the country illegally as children from deportation. The DACA was introduced as an interim relief even as the debate on a comprehensive immigration reform to address the status of 11 million undocumented residents in America is caught in a political logjam for years. DACA protected 800000 people, 7800 of them of Indian origin.
Flip-flop
Mr. Trump had flip-flopped on his position on DACA, after its discontinuation was announced last month. The Democratic leadership that met the President later announced that they had a deal with him to protect DACA beneficiaries, popularly called ‘dreamers.’ As his base was infuriated over the apparent concession, Mr. Trump made his promise of leniency conditional, and reiterated it during an interview to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday.
“…look, we have 8,00,000 people. They’re not necessarily young. You know a lot of people think they’re children. I guess they average from 16 to 39 or so, but a lot of these people are in the military, they have jobs, the have this, that — it’s a very — I fully understand it. But if we’re going to do something, we have to get something in return. And what I want is tremendous border regulation, I want the wall, and we’re going to get other things. And we’re going to see if we can work something out. Now, whether or not we do, I don’t know. But it would be wonderful to solve the DACA,” the President said.
The Democrats and a considerable number of Republicans in Congress are in support of continued protections to dreamers, but a majority of them are opposed to building the wall, a provocative election slogan that contributed significantly to Mr. Trump’s rise. Mr. Trump said his compassion for the dreamers would be linked to Congressional support for harsh restrictions on immigration in general.
Vows to end chain migration
The President said he wanted to end ‘chain migration’ — the American model that allows immigrants to sponsor their relatives for immigration into the country. “Chain migration is one of the disasters. You allow one person in, and that one person brings in 10 or 12 people,” the President said.
“And by the way, even my most conservative, hardline friends in the Republican Party would really like to be able to solve 8,00,000 people — and honestly these people went through a lot because most of them went through our system. …Many of them don’t speak the language of their country because they’ve never been to their country….So, we are going to try and solve that. But if we’re going to solve that we want a wall a we want great border security,” said Mr. Trump.