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He Went To Jared!

White House Hopes Kushner Immigration Plan Will Be ‘First Step’ Towards Reform Legislation, Officials Say

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White House Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner delivers remarks at the working luncheon for the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom on July 26, 2018 at the U.S. Department of State, in Washington, D.C. (State Department photo)

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2019 — President Trump on Thursday will unveil an immigration reform plan that would translate some of his rhetoric on the subject into concrete proposals, White House officials said.

The plan Trump will lay out in remarks delivered from the White House Rose Garden is largely the work of Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, a senior administration official told BeltwayBreakfast.

The official said Kushner hopes the plan can provide Republicans with a set of proposals that would have the President’s support if passed as legislation, and hopefully let him replicate the success he had shepherding the FIRST STEP Act criminal justice bill through Congress by bringing that experience to bear on an issue on as toxic as any in American political discourse.

The forthcoming proposal “is a first step towards having that discussion,” he said.

As described to BeltwayBreakfast, Kushner’s plan would address problems the President has identified as weaknesses in current immigration law and is built around several “pillars,” including securing the US-Mexico border, protecting Americans’ wages, satisfying employers’ need for skilled workers, and unifying families while preserving America’s “humanitarian values.”

The White House is presenting it as an effort to overhaul an immigration system that has remained largely unchanged over the half-century since then-President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act into law.

That law, which became effective in 1968, retooled the American immigration system from one that utilized quotas favoring northern and western Europeans over immigrants from Eastern Europe — with heavy restrictions on immigration from countries with largely populations — to one that was blind to race, national origin or ancestry.

According to one senior administration official, the proposal would replace the current system which favors relatives of U.S. citizens and lacks any numerical restrictions for family members with a “merit-based” immigration system which would assign points to potential immigrants based on factors like education, age, skills, employment status, and English proficiency.

While current immigration law allows U.S. citizens to sponsor an unlimited number of extended family members — making them eligible for immigrant visas — the plan the official described would limit “family unification” eligibility to a U.S. citizen’s children and spouse, putting an end what anti-immigration activists and President Trump call “chain migration.”

It would also eliminate the “diversity lottery,” which gives citizens of countries with low rates of immigration to the United States a chance to obtain an immigrant visa. The President has frequently attacked the program as one that allows other countries to “enter” undesirables in order to send them to the United States without vetting, even though individuals enter the lottery on their own initiative and are thoroughly vetted before being allowed to enter.

Even with the demise of the visa lottery and the restrictions on immigration by citizens’ extended family members, another White House official stressed that the proposal would not effect the overall number of legal immigrants entering the U.S. because it would increase the number of immigrants admitted on merit — described by the official as “the best and brightest” — from 12 percent to 57 percent.

“We’re not increasing it, we’re not decreasing it,” the official said. “We’re just changing the composition.”

Officials said the Kushner plan will also feature a border security component, including funding for border security measures, including 33 sections of the President’s wall along the US-Mexico border, new technology and infrastructure improvements at ports of entry, and a sustainable fund for border security.

Additionally, the plan would also reform existing asylum laws by tightening requirements for asylum and giving immigration officials the tools to reform what the White House official described as a system rife with fraud by removing “magnets” for asylum seekers and closing what the administration has described as “loopholes” that allow asylum seekers to easily remain in the country.

Although the plan described to BeltwayBreakfast was long on goals, administration officials were short on details when asked for specifics about the what proposed changes the plan would make to asylum laws, or whether those changes would allow the U.S. to meet its treaty obligations under the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Such details — including proposed legislative language for Congress — are several weeks away, said the official, who noted the plan was more a starting point than a finished proposal.

But even in a more detailed form, the plan looks to be dead on arrival in Congress, as Democrats have been loathe to take up any immigration reform proposal that does not address the status of millions of people who are currently living in the U.S. without authorization.

In particular, Democrats have repeatedly balked at proposals that fail to provide permanent protection and a path to citizenship for so-called “dreamers,” undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children. While some undocumented immigrants are covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, no new sign-ups have been permitted since President Trump ended the program in 2017.

When asked why the plan made no attempt to address matters that would be necessary to garner the required Democratic votes for passage in the House or Senate, the official stressed that the plan is more a statement of priorities for Republicans to rally around than a comprehensive solution of any sort.

“This is a ‘Here’s what merit-based immigration looks like under the Trump administration, here’s what border security looks like,’ which is progress,” but isn’t going to resolve the systemic problems, he said.

“Nobody’s ever put something out and people say: ‘That’s the greatest idea, let’s sign it tomorrow, let’s do a parade for you.’ Where you start is never where you end. This is the right place to start.”

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Andrew Feinberg covers the White House, Capitol Hill, and anywhere else news happens for BeltwayBreakfast.com and BroadbandBreakfast.com. He has reported on policy and politics in the nation's capital since 2007, and his writing has appeared in publications like The Hill, Politico, Communications Daily, Silicon Angle, and Washington Business Journal. He has also appeared on both daytime and prime radio and television news programs on NPR, Sirius-XM, CNN, MSNBC, ABC (Australia), Al Jazeera, NBC Digital, Voice of America, TV Rain (Russia) and CBS News. Andrew wishes he could say he lives in Washington, DC with his dog, but unfortunately, he lives in a no-dogs building in suburban Maryland.

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