Donald Trump tells Republicans a 2,200 mile border wall is not needed for an immigration deal

  It looks as though the next big issue to be debated in Washington, along with the spending bill, will be immigration reform. Donald Trump has already stated he would be willing to negotiate on DACA in return for funding a border wall. But now he is telling Republicans in private that a 2,200 mile physical wall is not needed during the negotiations on immigration reform.

  Here is more:

President Trump on Thursday laid out his demands for an immigration deal to Republican senators, making clear he doesn’t expect Congress to build a physical 2,200-mile concrete wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Instead, the president wants Congress to increase security along the border by ratcheting up patrols, surveillance and fencing, in return for relief for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients in an immigration deal that could be tied to the 2018 spending bill. 

“People want to paint that it’s some 2,000-mile long, 30-foot-high wall of concrete. That’s not what he means and not what he tries to say,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who met with Trump at the White House Thursday.

“There’s going to be border fencing in some areas, there’s going to be vehicular barricades, there’s going to be technology, there’s going to be greater manpower in some areas,” he added.

Lankford said Trump has been clear “in private.”

  Maybe Donald Trump has been clear in private but the reason some people “want to paint that it’s some 2,000 mile long, 30-foot-high wall of concrete” is because publicly during the campaign the soon to be President promised a tall, big, beautiful wall.

  That is what he campaigned on however I think, with the exception of his most ardent supporters, most people understood this tall, big, beautiful wall was never going to happen. So this means it is time to get real about the situation now that it is being negotiated.

  What Donald Trump is strident about in the possible upcoming deal is an end to chain migration and the visa lottery program in return for DACA.

Trump told lawmakers to end chain migration and the visa lottery program as part of a possible deal with Democrats to protect an estimated 800,000 Dreamers from deportation.

Under chain migration, relatives of immigrants with legal status receive preferential treatment, and the diversity visa lottery program, which provides visas to people from countries that have relatively few immigrants in the United States.

Trump called chain migration “a total disaster” and the visa lottery program “bad for our economy and very bad for security.”  

“He’s been very strong on the visa lottery program,” Lankford said of Trump. “He thinks it’s a foolish way to be able to do immigration policy. It’s just a random selection.”

  Whether you like it or not DACA is going to be continued because both the Democrats and the establishment Republicans want it to be continued and when Donald Trump announced an end to the DACA program he purposely left the door open to continue the program on a permanent basis through legislation–which is how it should have been implemented in the first place.

  What is comes down to in my opinion is this: If we have better border security–with more agents and added technology–along with some additional walling where it is most necessary and this is coupled with an end to chain migration and the visa lottery, and the laws which are already on the books are actually enforced instead of ignored, this might be the best deal we can hope for. It will be a step in the right direction.

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium