President Donald Trump has taunted Democrats with a new prescription to deal with the immigration impasse, saying he would much rather prefer another government shutdown if the Democrats do not come round and agree to his terms for protecting nearly 7,00,000 young, illegal immigrants.
“I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this stuff taken care of,” Trump said in a surprise missive to the Democrats on Tuesday — just two days before the next deadline to avert a second Government shutdown under his watch.
“If we don’t change the legislation, if we don’t get rid of these loopholes where killers are allowed to come into our country and continue to kill ... if we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown,” Trump said during a White House meeting to discuss the problem posed by the violent MS-13 gang, said to consist mostly of illegal immigrants.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who and President Trump cross swords frequently, dismissed Trump’s shutdown talk, commenting it “speaks for itself”.
“We had one Trump shutdown, nobody wants another, maybe except him,” Schumer said. During the first shutdown last month over the immigration issue, Trump dubbed it a “Schumer shutdown”, and the Democratic Senator called it a “Trump shutdown”.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats were actually close to a deal on a long-term spending bill that would avert a shutdown in the hope that it would help them to negotiate the elusive immigration deal.
Trump, who can approve or reject any immigration deal that the Congress puts together and votes upon, has set his own terms for going along. In his own legislative framework, he has proposed funding for the building a wall along the Mexican border and other security measures to deal with illegal immigration in
return for a path to citizenship to ‘Dreamers’ over a 12-year period.
Trump also remains firm on two other components — limiting family-based legal immigration to spouses and minor children and ending the diversity visa lottery programme. In return, he has offered to promote merit-based immigration.