Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) confirmed a previous Breitbart News report, admitting that he has not even read President Trump’s 70-point, detailed list of popular, pro-American immigration reforms.
In an interview with The Hill, McCain said he “didn’t pay attention” to Trump’s immigration priorities, which include:
- Construction of a border wall
- Deporting unaccompanied alien children who are not at-risk in their native country
- Preventing criminal illegal aliens and gang members from receiving immigration benefits
- Mandating E-Verify, which weeds out illegal aliens from taking U.S. jobs
- Eliminating the diversity visa lottery
- Classifying overstaying a visa as a “misdemeanor”
- Restricting certain federal grants to sanctuary cities that refuse to detain criminal illegal aliens
- Ending family-based chain migration
- Enacting a merit-based legal immigration where only qualified immigrants can enter the U.S.
“I didn’t pay attention to them,” McCain said of the popular immigration priorities. “There’s no reason for me to pay attention to them.”
When The Hill asked McCain why he had not taken the immigration priorities seriously, he said, “because it’s non-starters.”
McCain’s admission to not bothering to read Trump’s immigration agenda reveals the GOP establishment’s unwillingness to deliver popular pro-American reforms to the current legal immigration system, by which the U.S. takes in roughly 1.5 million foreign nationals every year.
Instead, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican senators, including McCain, are reportedly working on multiple amnesty plans for illegal aliens that could potentially trigger a chain migration of upwards of 19 million foreign nationals coming to the U.S., as Breitbart News reported.
Though Republicans on Capitol Hill have seemingly ignored Trump’s immigration priorities, the reforms remain incredibly popular with the American people.
A Pulse Opinion Research poll in August showed that Americans believe the second-most important aspect to stemming the flow of illegal immigration was constructing a border wall on the southern border, a tenet of Trump’s immigration priorities.
That same Pulse Opinion Research poll found that 68 percent of Americans support mandatory E-Verify, 53 percent say stopping employers from hiring illegal aliens is the most important component to ending illegal immigration, and 54 percent said they wanted to see overall legal immigration levels reduced.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.