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<strong>The Associated Press</strong> | President Trump looks to
Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation,
as she speaks during a prison reform roundtable in the Roosevelt Room
on Thursday.</p>
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<h1>Trump explicitly questions U.S. immigration policy</h1>
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Thursday January 11, 2018 06:00 PM
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The Associated Press
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<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used vulgar language when
questioning Thursday why the U.S. should permit more immigrants from
certain countries after senators discussed revamping rules affecting
entrants from Africa and Haiti, according to three people briefed on the
conversation.</p><p>Trump made the remark in the Oval Office as two
lawmakers described details to him of a bipartisan compromise among six
senators that would extend protections against deportation for hundreds
of thousands of young immigrants and strengthen border protections.</p><div id="gmail-paragraph-ad" style="display:block;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:15px;float:left;clear:both;width:100%;background:rgb(249,249,249) none repeat scroll 0px 0px">
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</div><p>The senators had hoped Trump would back their accord, ending
a months-long, bitter dispute over protecting “Dreamers.” But the White
House later rejected their proposed agreement, plunging the issue back
into uncertainty just eight days before a deadline that threatens a
government shutdown.</p><p>During their conversation, Dick Durbin of
Illinois, the chamber's No. 2 Senate Democratic leader, was explaining
that as part of that deal, a lottery for visas that has benefited people
from Africa and other nations would be ended, the sources said, though
there could be some other way for them to apply. Durbin said people
would be allowed to stay in the U.S. who fled here after disasters hit
their homes in places including El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti.</p><p>Trump
specifically questioned why the U.S. would want to admit more people
from Haiti. The president suggested that instead, the U.S. should allow
more entrants from countries like Norway. Trump met this week with
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.</p><p>Asked about the remarks, White House spokesman Raj Shah did not deny them.</p><p>“Certain
Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but
President Trump will always fight for the American people,” he said.</p><p>Trump's
remarks were remarkable even by the standards of a president who has
been accused by his foes of racist attitudes and has routinely smashed
through public decorum that his modern predecessors have generally
embraced.</p><p>The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly describe the conversation.</p><p>The
Trump administration announced late last year that it would end a
temporary residency permit program that allowed nearly 60,000 citizens
from Haiti to live and work in the United States following a devastating
2010 earthquake.</p><p>Trump has spoken positively about Haitians in
public. During a 2016 campaign event in Miami, he said “the Haitian
people deserve better” and told the audience of Haitian-Americans he
wanted to “be your greatest champion, and I will be your champion.”</p><p>The
agreement that Durbin and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., described to
Trump also includes his $1.6 billion request for a first installment on
his long-sought border wall, aides familiar with the agreement said.
They required anonymity because the agreement is not yet public.</p><p>Trump's request covers 74 miles of border wall as part of a 10-year, $18 billion proposal.</p><p>Democrats
including Durbin had long vowed they would not fund the wall but are
accepting the opening request as part of a broader plan that protects
from deportation about 800,000 younger immigrants brought to the country
as children and now here illegally.</p><p>The deal also includes restrictions on rules allowing immigrants to bring some relatives to the U.S.</p><p>In
an afternoon of drama and confusing developments, three other GOP
lawmakers — including two hardliners on immigration — were also in
Trump's office for Thursday's meeting, a development sources said Durbin
and Graham did not expect. It was unclear why the three Republicans
were there, and the session did not produce the results the two senators
were hoping for.</p><p>“There has not been a deal reached yet,” said
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But she added, “We
haven't quite gotten there, but we feel like we're close.”</p><p>Underscoring
the pitfalls facing the effort, other Republicans also undercut the
significance of the deal the half-dozen senators hoped to sell to Trump.</p><p>“How do six people bind the other 94 in the Senate? I don't get that,” said No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn of Texas.</p><p>Cornyn
said the six lawmakers were hoping for a deal and “everyone would fall
in line. The president made it clear to me on the phone less than an
hour ago that he wasn't going to do that.”</p><p>The six senators have
been meeting for months to find a way to revive protections for young
immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and are here illegally.
Trump ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program
last year but has given Congress until March 5 to find a way to keep it
alive.</p><p>Federal agencies will run out of money and have to shut
down if lawmakers don't pass legislation extending their financing by
Jan. 19. Some Democrats are threatening to withhold their votes — which
Republicans will need to push that legislation through Congress — unless
an immigration accord is reached.</p><p>Cornyn said the real work for a
bipartisan immigration deal will be achieved by a group of four leading
lawmakers — the No. 2 Republicans and Democrats in both the House and
Senate. That group met for the first time this week.</p><p>The
immigration effort seemed to receive a boost Tuesday when Trump met with
two dozen lawmakers and agreed to seek a bipartisan way to resuscitate
the program. The group agreed to also include provisions strengthening
security — which for Trump means building parts of a wall along the
border with Mexico — curbing immigrants' relatives from coming here and
restricting the visa lottery.</p><p>Also in Thursday's Oval Office
meeting were House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and two
conservative lawmakers who've taken a hard line on immigration: Sen. Tom
Cotton, R-Ark., and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte,
R-Va.</p><p>A Republican with knowledge of Thursday's meeting said the
White House hastily invited Cotton to join the immigration discussion.</p><p>“The
American people don't want that style of immigration reform,” Cotton
told reporters about the bipartisan senators' offer. “They certainly
don't want this pine needle of a proposal that was on the table today.”</p><p>Any immigration deal would face hurdles winning congressional approval.</p><p>Many
Democrats would oppose providing substantial sums for Trump's campaign
promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Many Hispanic and
liberal members of the party oppose steps toward curtailing immigration
such as ending the visa lottery and restricting the relatives that legal
immigrants could bring to the U.S.</p><p>Among Republicans, some
conservatives are insisting on going further than the steps that Trump
has suggested. They want to reduce legal immigration, require employers
to verify workers' citizenship and block federal grants to so-called
sanctuary cities that hinder federal anti-immigrant efforts.</p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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