Trump pressures Democrats to bargain on immigration

WHITE SULFUR SPRINGS, W. Va. – President Donald Trump turned up the pressure on Democrats on Thursday to come to an agreement with Republicans on protections for young immigrants, asserting that opposition leaders “talk a good game” but care more about politics than actually resolving the matter.

In a speech to Republican lawmakers, Trump complained that Democrats were unwilling to budge and would rather see him fail than make progress on immigration or other issues that would benefit the country. At the same time, he warned his fellow Republicans that they would have to make compromises themselves if they are to reach a deal.

“They talk a good game with DACA, but they don’t produce,” Trump said of Democrats, referring to the Obama-era policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that he has ordered canceled. “Either they come on board or we’re going to have to really work” harder to elect more Republicans in this fall’s midterm congressional elections.

Trump in September effectively ended the DACA program, which grants work permits to immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and protects them from deportation, on the grounds that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority by creating it through executive action. But Trump has expressed support for restoring it through legislation if Congress can agree. The president intends to phase out the program by March 5.

The president’s comments in his speech at a Republican retreat in West Virginia on Thursday came several hours after he lambasted Democrats on Twitter for “doing nothing about DACA.”

Trump proposed legislation last week that would create a path to citizenship for as many as 1.8 million unauthorized immigrants in exchange for an expensive border wall, a crackdown on other immigrants in the United States illegally and an end to decades of family migration policies and a visa lottery program intended to promote diversity among immigrants admitted to the United States.

The president rejected a bipartisan immigration proposal from senators as part of a spending bill last month, leading to a three-day government shutdown. Trump’s State of the Union address, in which he referred to immigrants as gang members and killers, did not signal he was amenable to a bipartisan deal he has said he wants. Instead, appropriating a term used to describe the younger immigrants, he said, “Americans are Dreamers too,” a line that angered Democrats.

Trump expanded on that Thursday at the Republican retreat, rejecting the term. “Some people call it Dreamers,” he said. “It’s not Dreamers. Don’t fall into that trap.”

In addressing the Republican retreat, Trump reprised many of the elements of his State of the Union speech but focused on immigration, perhaps his biggest legislative priority, and seemed intent on pressuring Republicans as well as Democrats to come to the table.

“We’re going to have to compromise unless we elect more Republicans,” he warned. “We have to be willing to give a little in order for our country to gain a whole lot.”

Speaking to reporters at the retreat Thursday morning, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, acknowledged that coming up with an immigration bill that can attract the 60 votes needed in the Senate, pass the House and receive Trump’s signature was “a difficult needle to thread.”

Thune suggested that the best approach might be to narrow the scope of the legislation to only two of the four “pillars” that the president has proposed addressing, leaving out family-based migration and the diversity visa lottery.

“I think that if we can solve DACA and border security, that may be the best we can hope for,” Thune said. He described such a narrower plan as a “fallback position that can pass the House, the Senate and get signed,” adding that if “other issues enter into that conversation, it gets more complicated.”

But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he did not believe such a two-pillar approach would pass the House.