Amid Furor Over Racist Tweets, White House Announces Immigration Bill
(July 16, 2019) The White House announced Tuesday that it has quietly drafted a 620-page immigration bill and has lined up 10 Republican senators to co-sponsor the measure should it be introduced, according to a senior administration official involved in the process.
This builds on a blueprint that President Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner announced in May and that addressed border security and legal immigration but didn’t deal with the millions of people currently in the country illegally, including young people known as Dreamers.
“In Washington, I find a lot of people are very quick to say what they are against,” Kushner said during a Cabinet meeting at which he shared details of the plan. “But it’s very important for us to articulate as an administration what we’re for, but to do it in detail. And we’re not afraid to put out details because we think that this proposal is a very very good proposal that really is great for America.”
The push for a new immigration bill comes just days after Trump ignited a furious controversy by tweeting that four non-white members of Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four members are American citizens, and three of the four were born in the United States.
When the immigration blueprint was first announced, it was greeted with mixed reviews and a heavy dose of skepticism about its political prospects. After that initial burst of energy, Congress seemed to ignore it and the White House stopped talking about it.
But Kushner said it remained a top priority.
“The Trump administration, despite what some people say, believes in safe, legal immigration and is against illegal and random migration,” he said.
During the Cabinet meeting, Trump threw his support behind the Kushner-led plan.
He called it “compassionate” and “the best of everything.”
“Our country really has a tremendous immigration gap,” Trump said, calling the current system a “maze of complexity.”
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