White House Official: DACA Deal Still on Table — If It ‘First Delivers for American Citizens’

Young immigrants, activists and supporters of the DACA program march through downtown Los
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty

All legislation on immigration must include President Trump’s detailed list of immigration principles in order to receive White House support, a Trump administration official reiterated.

Despite efforts by the Republican establishment and Democrats to ram through a year-end amnesty for nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation by the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, a White House official said Trump is tirelessly committed to immigration reform that is in the interest of Americans, not illegal aliens and the corporate lobby.

“The President has made clear any immigration reform must first deliver for American citizens and workers,” Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told McClatchy. “His priorities are securing the border with a wall, closing legal loopholes that enable illegal entry, interior enforcement and combating visa overstays, and ending chain migration.”

Trump’s populist agenda on immigration includes:

  • 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.

The White House’s shooting down of a DACA amnesty deal that does not include Trump’s immigration principles is in-line with how the majority of Americans view the issue.

A recent Morning Consult-Politico poll found that less than 30 percent of Americans said giving DACA illegal aliens amnesty should be a priority, Breitbart News reported.

Meanwhile, a whopping 82 percent of Americans said helping unemployed Americans find jobs should be a higher priority for Congress than providing work permits to illegal aliens, a poll conducted by National Research Inc /The Polling Company found. A total of 78 percent of Democrats agreed that unemployed Americans should be helped before illegal aliens are.

Unlike an amnesty for illegal aliens, many of Trump’s pro-American reforms are actually popular with the American people.

A Pulse Opinion Research poll in August, though, 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.

That same poll found that 68 percent of Americans support mandatory E-Verify, 53 percent say stopping employers from hiring illegal aliens was the most important component to ending illegal immigration, and 54 percent said they wanted to see overall legal immigration levels reduced.

In September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the DACA program would officially be ended in March 2018. Since then, the political establishments, the open borders lobby and big business have attempted to quickly lobby and pass an amnesty deal that could potentially result in a flood between 9.9 to 19 million of foreign extended family members arriving in the U.S. in years to come.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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