What Immigration Advocates Hope Trump Says in Tonight’s Address

A real and timely end to chain migration is one thing that immigration critics want from President Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address in the House of Representatives.

Another is an expansion of E-Verify, the employer database run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with access to the system via the internet. The website can verify the citizenship status of potential and current employees and has been operative since 1997, but participation is mostly voluntary for private-sector employers.

[lz_ndn video=33484245]

That’s what advocates of stronger border security and tough immigration reforms told LifeZette about their wishes for the annual address to Congress, to take place tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

Given last week’s White House compromise proposal shared with some of Trump’s top congressional allies and immigration critics, it’s clear conservatives want almost as much retracted by Trump as proposed.

“What we expect is the president will go back to the positions he took earlier,” said Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Mehlman said he and other immigration critics were briefed on the proposal last week. It was laid out by presidential aide Stephen Miller last week. The reaction to that Thursday proposal was anger and disappointment from several of the most influential advocates of tough immigration policies.

“It was long on amnesty and short on considerations for the American people,” Mehlman told LifeZette before the State of the Union.

Trump expanded potential amnesty for illegal alien adults brought here as children, from the estimated 700,000 to as many as 1.8 million. The new, higher number would include many illegal aliens who never applied for the amnesty granted by former President Barack Obama in 2012 via an executive order. Trump also proposed a 10-year path to citizenship for the 1.8 million immigrants, something many immigration policy hardliners oppose.

Obama extended temporary amnesty grants to about 700,000 such illegal aliens in his executive order, which created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump, after more than seven months in office, rescinded the DACA executive order in September.

Trump’s decision forced Democrats to the bargaining table for serious negotiations to fix the U.S. immigration system. Those DACA grants begin to expire in March, although a federal court order has likely delayed the expiration.

But groups and critics who hope for immigration reform want much more from the president and Congress if a deal on DACA is made.

Chris Chmielenski, director of content and activism for NumbersUSA, also said the lack of E-Verify in Trump’s proposal was odd.

“As long as employers are allowed to employ illegal aliens, they will find a way to come here,” said Chmielenski.

Both NumbersUSA and FAIR said they also want an end to chain migration and the diversity lottery for green cards. A commission on immigration recommended eliminating both those items in the mid-1990s, Chmielenski said, but Congress balked.

Chain migration is the addition of legal immigrants through the sponsorship of family members. Trump has said the policy has allowed distant relatives to get green cards, kicking off new chains of immigrants.

Related: Trump vs. Trump May Be Huge Obstacle for White House in Immigration Debate

The diversity lottery awards green cards to people in various nations, to boost the diversity of the immigration population. Critics say the diversity lottery has never shown any benefit to the United States.

Chmielenski said Trump’s proposal last week didn’t really end chain migration or the diversity lottery — instead moving the visas to other programs. Chain migration would continue undiminished for at least a decade under Trump’s proposal, said Chmielenski.

PoliZette White House writer Jim Stinson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.

(photo credit, homepage image: Central American Migrants Find Quarter in Southern Mexico [1], [2], enhanced, CC BY 2.0, by Peter Haden; photo credit, article image: Donald Trump, cut out, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Gage Skidmore)