Deal Requires $25 Billion to Build the Wall
President Donald Trump will support a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, some of whom are DACA recipients, NBC News is just reporting. It would be a major about face if it is true. The President had suggested as much in a quick conversation with reporters Wednesday night, but the statement was confirmed as policy by none other than Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior aide for policy, on a conference call Thursday with Republican lawmakers.
Miller is an anti-immigrant extremist. When he was then-Senator Jeff Sessions’ communications director he managed to kill a 2014 bipartisan attempt at comprehensive immigration reform.
Wednesday night, on the news Trump might allow 1.8 million Dreamers to become legal citizens, Breitbart, the far right wing website until recently headed by former Trump BFF Steve Bannon, ran this headline:
So it follows that many are skeptical.
NBC News now reports Trump’s “demands” for a deal on DACA, include “a $25 billion ‘trust fund’ for a border wall, an end to family reunification, also called ‘chain migration’ by conservatives, and an end to the diversity visa lottery.”
On Sunday GOP Senator Lindsey Graham blasted Miller by name, blaming him for the continuation of the shutdown.
“Every time we have a proposal it is only yanked back by staff members,” Graham told reporters. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating immigration, we’re going nowhere.”
Miller is so far to the right he allegedly has ties to Richard Spencer, the white supremacist who reportedly coined the rebranding of the racist hate ideology into the “alt-right” movement.
And in fact, Miller has been labeled a white supremacist by several notables, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Harvard law school constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, The Intercept columnist Shaun King, and Georgetown University, Vanderbilt University law professor and human rights lawyer Arjun Sethi, among others.
Is this just political posturing, a game of chicken, or can nearly two million Dreamers begin to call home, home?
UPDATE: 6:05 PM –
Image by John St. John via Flickr and a CC license