On Thursday afternoon, in front of the 2018 House and Senate Republican Member Conference, President Trump wanted to make sure his views about passing a DACA deal were clear: “Nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes a permanent solution on DACA. And I’ve been hearing about DACA for so many years. Some people call it DREAMers. It’s not DREAMers. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s just much different than DREAMers. And I said the other night, you know, we have dreamers too. We have dreamers in this country, too. You can’t forget our dreamers. I have a lot of dreamers here.”
Actually, Trump is wrong, but why would facts matter to him?
There you have it. And if you want to watch and read about what else he said on immigration, here are two videos we are sharing.
Part 1 (Along With Official Transcript)
And finally, after decades of waiting, we can finally pass immigration reform that protects our country, defends our borders, and modernizes our immigration rules to serve the needs of American workers and of American families. So important.
One of the strengths of the Republican Party is that we’re a big tent with many diverse views, but the one thing we can all agree on — and that’s that, in every decision, we make our highest priority to serve and to protect the American people.
We want an immigration policy that’s fair, equitable, but that’s going to protect our people. We want people coming into our country based on merit and based on the fact that they are going to love our country, and they respect our people and our country. We don’t want visa lottery. Pick a lottery ticket. Pick a lottery. We don’t want that. So we want it based on merit. (Applause.)
We have a chance now to pass into law the immigration reforms that the American people have been demanding for decades and that many of you have been working on for your entire careers. We have a great opportunity as a Republican Party. As the Republican Party, we have a great opportunity. We’re getting very little help from the Democrats, but I hope after I leave this room, we’re going to get a call from these people saying, “Let’s go.”
You know, they talk a good game. We have to get help from the other side, or we have to elect many more Republicans. That’s another way of doing it. (Applause.) Really, that’s another way of doing it. And based on the numbers we just saw, we have a real chance of doing that. You know, ’18 is going to be very interesting. But we’ve got to do one or the other. Either they’re going to have to come on board — because they talk a good game with DACA, but they don’t produce.
And so either they come on board, or we’re just going to have to really work and we’re going to have to get more people so we can get the kind of numbers that we need to pass, in a much easier fashion, legislation. And to get it done, we’ll all have to make some compromises along the way — to get it done this way. Now, to get it done the other way, if we win more, we don’t have to compromise so much. Okay? With the tax bill, we got what we wanted because we had, essentially, a unanimous vote.
But we have to go, and we have to get it done and get it done properly, and we’re going to have to compromise — unless we elect more Republicans, in which case, we can have it just the way everybody in this room wants it. We have to be willing to give a little in order for our country to gain a whole lot.
If we’re united, if we work together for the good of the nation, and we can fulfill our sacred duty to the country and to our incredible voters, we have really fulfilled a solemn promise.
As you know, I have put forward an immigration framework based on many months of meeting and working with Tom Cotton, and working with John Cornyn, who was in the office the other day, and David Perdue — incredible people — and Bob Goodlatte, who’s out here someplace. Really incredible people. And it’s a strong bill, but it’s a very fair bill. And it protects our border. We have to protect our borders. (Applause.)
It includes reforms that are overwhelmingly popular with the voters, including Democrats. The Democrats want to have — the real Democrats, they want to have their borders protected. But it includes Democrats, independents, Republicans. Americans want an immigration system that works for everybody. And they want safety.
Part 2 (Along With Official Transcript)
Nearly 7 in 10 Americans support an immigration reform package that includes a permanent solution on DACA. And I’ve been hearing about DACA for so many years. Some people call it DREAMers. It’s not DREAMers. Don’t fall into that trap. It’s just much different than DREAMers. And I said the other night, you know, we have dreamers too. We have dreamers in this country, too. You can’t forget our dreamers. I have a lot of dreamers here. (Applause.)
But DACA — we want to take care of DACA, and I hope we will. We need the support of the Democrats in order to do it, and they might not want to do it. They talk like they do, but I don’t think they do. But we’re going to find out very soon.
We want something that is very, very tough and strong, in terms of the border. We need to end chain migration, and we need to cancel the terrible visa lottery. (Applause.)
And those are the four pillars that I talked about the other night. We call them the White House framework — a plan that will finally bring our immigration system into the 21st Century.
The Republican position on immigration is the center, mainstream view of the American people, with some extra strength at the border and security at the border added in. What we’re asking for and what the American people are pleading for is sanity and common sense in our immigration system. We want immigration rules that protect our communities, defend our security, and admit people who will love our country and contribute to our society.
I know that the Senate is planning to bring an immigration bill on the floor, to the floor, in coming weeks. And I’m asking that the framework we submitted — with great flexibility, great flexibility, working with both parties — that something very positive will come out of it for our country, for everybody — for our country. And I think that can happen.
If the Democrats choose to filibuster a framework that includes a generous path to citizenship or something that is not fair, we are not going to approve it. We’re just not going to approve it.
So we’ll either have something that’s fair and equitable and good and secure, or we’re going to have nothing at all. And this has been going on for many years. It doesn’t make sense, however, to have nothing at all, because this is something that people want.
So we will be demonstrating that we are very, very serious. One of the reasons I gave a number that was, I thought, a very generous number was because I wanted to see whether or not they were interested in approving that. Because if they don’t approve something within that sphere, that means, very simply, that they’re not looking to approve it at all. They want to use it for an election issue, but it’s now an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit. (Applause.)
