What Trump’s New Immigration Proposals Could Mean For ‘Dreamers’

The immigration demands that the administration of President Donald Trump sent to Congress on Sunday is likely to complicate any deal with Democrats regarding the protection for roughly 700,000 young people now facing possible deportation from the U.S., reports said.

The White House aides indicated that they expect Congress to include the "principles" released Sunday in any package deal regarding the so-called Dreamers, the Washington Post reported.

These demands — including the building of a wall on the southern border and major changes to the legal immigration system — were denounced by Democrat lawmakers, portending a bleak future for the Dreamers, who will not be able to remain in the country legally.

The list of principles includes the following requests:

• Construction of the wall across the Mexico border.
• Employing 10,000 additional immigrations and customs enforcement officers and 1,000 attorneys for the agency.
• An extra 370 immigration judges and 300 federal prosecutors
• Banning immigrants from bringing their extended family members to the U.S.
• The use of the E-Verify program by companies to keep illegal immigrants from getting jobs.
• The principles included construction of a wall across the border with Mexico and employing 10,000 additional Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers and 1,000 attorneys for the agency.

The principles also mentioned about a crackdown on the influx of Central American minors and curbs on federal grants to "sanctuary cities," the Washington Post reported citing a document distributed to Congress and obtained by the news outlet.

These proposals would reduce the number of permanent resident visas issued and also lower the number of refugees accepted. Under these principles, there will be restrictions for family-based green cards to spouses and minor children and there will also be a creation for a point-based system for legal immigration.

Although, Trump's team didn't reveal how much legal immigration would be reduced under the plan, the impact would clearly be significant, according to Los Angeles Times.

These proposals were swiftly rejected by leading Democrats, BBC reported.

They blamed the administration of reneging on the agreement over protection of Dreamers they had reached at a dinner between the president and Democrats at the White House last month.

After that dinner, Democratic leaders were hopeful that Trump would not demand a border wall in exchange for signing legislation to provide legal status to immigrants under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA).

Sens. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) criticized Trump's administration in a joint statement saying that their list of immigration proposals is a "anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to the vast majority of Americans."

“The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations. If the President was serious about protecting the Dreamers, his staff has not made a good faith effort to do so," the Democratic leaders said in the statement.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus chairwoman Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico) also slammed Trump's proposal and said his "draconian and anti-immigrant principles jeopardize the bi-partisan, bi-cameral progress that has been made to pass a legislative solution that will protect nearly 800,000 Dreamers," according to Fox News.

Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-California 40th District) tweeted that Trump's immigration principles fail to reflect America's values.

Democrats were hopeful that Trump would be willing to draft a narrow legislative deal to protect the Dreamers, however their hopes were dashed Sunday.