President Trump said Friday there’s a “good chance” Democrats work with him to pass an immigration overhaul, even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others in her party have declared his proposal “dead on arrival.”
Trump fired off a series of tweets touting his new immigration plan, which would seek to overhaul the green card system and move toward a “merit-based” process that gives preference to job skills and education rather than family connections.
“The Democrats now realize that there is a National Emergency at the Border and that, if we work together, it can be immediately fixed. We need Democrat votes and all will be well!” Trump tweeted.{mosads}
“Will the Democrats give our Country a badly needed immigration win before the election? Good chance!” he added later.
But the plan has gained little traction on Capitol Hill, and Democrats, who control the House, have made clear Trump’s proposal is going nowhere.
“This dead-on-arrival plan is not a remotely serious proposal,” Pelosi said in a statement.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the president is peddling “xenophobic and false stereotypes about immigrants from certain parts of the world.”
Trump on Friday tweeted that Border Patrol agents are detaining “the bad ‘hombres,’ of which there are many,” and registering other migrants who were detained and later released for future deportation.
“All people that are illegally coming into the United States now will be removed from our Country at a later date as we build up our removal forces and as the laws are changed,” Trump tweeted. “Please do not make yourselves too comfortable, you will be leaving soon!”
Unveiling his plan Thursday, Trump said it would address the physical and legal framework of the immigration system. He hailed the progress on his long-promised wall along the southern border, and sought to explain how the proposal would transform the U.S. immigration system.
He acknowledged in the speech that Democrats may not be willing to work with him, suggesting he would use the issue as a talking point during the 2020 campaign.
The plan was crafted by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and does not address the fate of young immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children, nor does it lower immigration numbers.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who on Wednesday presented his own immigration plan to overhaul the country’s asylum system, has expressed skepticism the White House plan will make it through Congress.
“The White House’s plan is not designed to become law,” Graham told reporters on Wednesday. “This is designed to become law. The White House plan is trying to unite the Republican Party around border security and merit-based immigration.”