United States President Donald Trump announced elements of an immigration law he will promote next week. During a press briefing on Wednesday Trump said he wanted US$25 billion to build the border wall and US$5 billion for border security.
Trump said the bill will also contain a pathway to citizenship for some "dreamers," undocumented immigrants who were taken to the U.S. as children, after 10 or 12 years. However, no provision to protect the parents of dreamers' is expected to be included in the bill as President Trump considers the issue to be "tricky."
Trump's announcement comes a day after Senate Democrats agreed to discuss the budget and immigration reform separately. According to Politico Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, a Democrat from the state of Illinois said Tuesday: “we’re viewing [immigration and spending] on separate terms because they are on separate paths.”
However, Democrats in the House of Representatives claim they will not approve a long-term budget deal without protections for dreamers.
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Roughly 800,000 dreamers are shielded from deportation by the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. Their presence in the U.S. was plunged into uncertainty in September 2017, when the Trump administration announced it was ending the program in March 2018.
According to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham the pathway to citizenship “will greatly help the Senate efforts to craft a proposal which President Trump can sign into law.”
Trump's announcement was soon clarified by a senior White House official saying citizenship was only a “discussion point,” the Associated Press reported.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the proposal would secure the border, end family sponsorship of immigrants, cancel the visa lottery system and provide a "permanent solution on DACA.”
The President has previously rejected bipartisan proposals to continue DACA, leading to the Jan. 19 standoff between Senate Republicans and Democrats that resulted in a three-day government shutdown.