The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Source: Fox News
Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:25 PM
White House Immigration Plan Would Offer Path To Citizenship For 1.8 Million "Dreamers"
The White House was expected to provide more details of the president's proposal early next week. But the proposal represents a reversal for Trump and could provoke resistance among his conservative allies.
In September, Trump ended the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which currently covers roughly 690,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
"We're not looking at citizenship," Trump told reporters at the time. "We're not looking at amnesty. We're looking at allowing people to stay here."
On Wednesday, however, Trump said he
was open to a pathway to citizenship for younger immigrants brought
illegally to the U.S. as children.
"We're going to morph into it," Trump told reporters. "It's going to
happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years."
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute said it believes the largest
share of the White House's 1.8 million people who'd be eligible for
citizenship -- 1.3 million -- are people who currently meet all of
DACA's eligibility requirements. These include years in the U.S., their
ages now and when they entered this country, and whether they have a
high school or equivalent education.
Another 400,000 are people who'd be eligible for DACA protection but for
their education. And 100,000 more are people who are under age 15 --the
minimum age allowed for most people requesting protection under the
program.
Legal status for the recipients would be revocable for criminal behavior
and national security threats, sources familiar with the plan told Fox
News, and eventual citizenship would require still-unspecified work and
education requirements -- and a finding that the immigrants are of "good
moral character."