Most Sponsors of US Immigration Bill Don't Defend Its Tenets

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers has reached an agreement over a narrow rewriting of a major immigration bill.

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The agreement only reinstates "two pillars" of the four which U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled in his State of the Union, SOTU, speech earlier in January. 

"You’re down to what most Americans would cheer: strong border security and fair treatment of 1.8 million DACA population," said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina. "It would be a two-pillar bill."

Trump's four pillars of immigration approach redefine some major tenets of the U.S. immigration system. The U.S. administration would legalize 1.8 million Dreamers.

However, the catch is that it would eliminate the diversity visa lottery system, fortify the southern U.S. border wall with additional border patrol agents and drone surveillance and effectively end "chain migration" as referred to by Trump in his SOTU speech. 

“I am asking all senators, in both parties, to support the Grassley bill and to oppose any legislation that fails to fulfill these four pillars,” Trump said in the statement. He referred to the chief sponsor of the measure, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, a Republican from Iowa.

According to Vox News, six out of seven senators sponsoring the Grassley bill have shown little to no interest in wanting legal immigration cuts. 

“There was never an intent — the motive was not necessarily a reduction — we actually need to increase the worker percentage of the population we are bringing in now,”  Sen. David Perdue said. 

One of the major blows is Trump's proposal of cuts to the legal immigration system, in the form of family immigration, including what Trump calls "chain migration." This would limit naturalized citizenship by sponsoring only "spouses and minor children," which would gut the legal immigration system by up to 40 percent.

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“The American people know what’s going on,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor.

“They know this president not only created the problem but seems to be against every solution that might pass because it isn’t 100 percent of what he wants. If, at the end of the week, we are unable to find a bill that can pass — and I sincerely hope that’s not the case due to the good efforts of so many people on both sides of the aisle — the responsibility will fall entirely on the president’s shoulders and those in this body who went along with him.”

Trump's understanding of "chain migration" is inherently flawed, critics claim.

David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, wrote for the Washington Post, "Trump confuses the issue further by using “chain” to refer to all family-sponsored immigrants except spouses and minor children of citizens or legal residents. Yet many U.S. citizens with foreign-born spouses are themselves immigrants who received citizenship through naturalization, and all foreign-born spouses and minor children of permanent residents are chain migrants. On the flip side, he labels all parents, siblings and adult children of citizens as “chain migrants,” even though many of the citizens were born here."