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President Donald Trump shot down an amnesty plan offered by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and several GOP Senators, prompting amnesty-advocates to wreck the amnesty talks by leaking Trump’s Oval Office “sh*thole” description of undeveloped countries.
The report said:
President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they floated restoring protections for immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met yesterday.
The comments left lawmakers taken aback, according to people familiar with their reactions. Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) proposed cutting the visa lottery program by 50 percent and then prioritizing countries already in the system, a White House official said.
The amnesty-plus plan was developed by Dubin and several pro-amnesty GOP Senators, including Sen. Cory Gardner from Colorado. The plan would provide an unpopular fast-track amnesty to more than one million illegals, reserve future chain-migration and also provide a quasi-amnesty to the illegal-immigrant parents who brought their children — dubbed ‘dreamers’ by Democrats — to the United States.
The Washington Post‘s story is based on a leak, likely from Durbin’s team. That leak suggests that Durbin and his allies do not expect to make a deal that they can sell to their base. Without that deal, the Democrats are using Trump’s “sh*thole” comment to blame his supposed racism for their failure to persuade Trump to abandon his base by accepting a big amnesty.
The White House released a statement after the Washington Post article was published. The statement did not deny the comment about less-developed countries, but promised an immigration policy which helps Americans and legal immigrants:
White House response to @jdawsey1 report on Trump’s “shithole countries” comment RE El Salvador & African countries: pic.twitter.com/qzfdmgyh68
— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) January 11, 2018
The amnesty advocates had hoped to persuade Trump via a many-on-one lobbying session, but White House officials quickly invited pro-American supporters to attend their pitch. The Trump supporters at the event included Georgia Sen. David Perdue, co-author of the pro-American RAISE Act. his aide tweeted:
NEW: @sendavidperdue on #immigration meeting today at #WhiteHouse:
“Today I went to the White House to stand firm with President Trump.
We’ve been crystal clear: chain migration must end–Period.
Any solution the Senate will consider must include ending chain migration.”
— Caroline Vanvick (@Cvanvick) January 11, 2018
The meeting also included Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who has drafted an immigration-and-small-amnesty bill that has already won Trump’s approval.
Trump semi-endorses House immigration bill, which cuts chain migration, ends visa lottery, changes laws to end catch & release at the border, and provide non-citizenship work-permit to 670k DACA illegals. Business is unhappy. https://t.co/6J92UlDVGw
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 11, 2018
Goodlatte’s bill has been applauded by House Speaker Paul Ryan, but Ryan has not yet announced if he plans to schedule a debate and vote.
Polls show that Trump’s American-first immigration policy is very popular. For example, a poll of likely 2018 voters shows two-to-one voter support for Trump’s pro-American immigration policies, and a lopsided four-to-one opposition against the cheap-labor, mass-immigration, economic policy pushed by bipartisan establishment-backed D.C. interest-groups.
Business groups and Democrats tout the misleading, industry-funded “Nation of Immigrants” polls because they which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants, including the roughly 670,000 ‘DACA’ illegals and the roughly 3.25 million ‘dreamer’ illegals.
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