He wants to cut it in half. I guess you could split hairs and say he is not completely against legal immigration, but he clearly has a yuge problem with legal immigration as it is.
It’s no surprise that Democrats have panned the White House’s immigration framework. But now Republicans are increasingly uncomfortable with President Donald Trump’s proposal to deeply cut legal immigration in exchange for protecting nearly 2 million Dreamers.
The bare-bones framework released late last week, which Trump promoted during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, would fundamentally reshape the nation’s immigration system by no longer allowing U.S. citizens to sponsor parents, adult children and siblings for green cards — amounting to the biggest proposed reduction in legal immigration in decades, experts say.
That idea, at least in concept, isn’t sitting well with many Republicans.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the overall plan from Trump is “credible” but that he would not support such significant cuts to the legal immigration side.
“The idea of cutting legal immigration in half and skewing the green cards to one area of the economy, I think, is bad for the economy,” Graham said, referring to the administration’s broad pitch to shift to a merit-based immigration system. “Not a whole lot of support for that. I want more legal immigration, not less.”
On the administration’s proposal to restrict legal immigration, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said: “We can agree to disagree to begin with, but we still get to write it.”