U.S. President Donald Trump told Republican lawmakers on Tuesday that he would back either of the immigration Bills making their way through the House of Representatives, as the outcry grew over his administration’s separation of immigrant parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Representative Mark Meadows said Mr. Trump told Republican members of the House at a meeting on Capitol Hill that they needed to get something done on immigration “right away”.
Congressional Republicans have been scrambling to craft legislation.
Children as hostages
Mr. Trump has sought to link an end to the family separations to passage of a wider Bill on immigration, which would include funding for his long-sought border wall with Mexico, prompting Democrats to accuse him of using children as hostages. “In his remarks, he endorsed both House immigration Bills that build the wall, close legal loopholes, cancel the visa lottery, curb chain migration, and solve the border crisis and family separation issue by allowing for family detention and removal,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said of Mr. Trump.
Both Republican Bills, which have been blasted by Democrats and immigration advocacy groups, would fund the border wall and reduce legal migration, in part by denying visas for some relatives of U.S. residents and citizens who are living abroad, sometimes referred to as “chain migration”. The more conservative Bill from Representative Bob Goodlatte would also deny “Dreamers,” immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, the chance of future citizenship.
