What to know what Sen. Tom Cotton will say about immigration on the Senate floor?
Here's the reply I got this morning.
Thank you for contacting me about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. It’s good to hear from you, as always.
President Trump’s decision to phase out the DACA program is the first step toward cleaning up the mess that President Obama’s unlawful amnesty left behind.President Trump is right that this amnesty would never have stood up in court. Yet, we now face a situation where some 700,000 people, who were brought to our country as minors, face legal limbo. Dealing with this problem is a legislative task, not an executive-branch task.
We must recognize that codifying the DACA program will have two inevitable, negative consequences: encouraging future illegal immigration with minors, and allowing those individuals to obtain legal status for their family members via extended-family chain migration—rewarding the very people who broke the law in the first place and further depressing working-class wages. As Congress negotiates how to codify DACA in a lawful and responsible manner, we must mitigate the negative consequences by stopping the extended-family chain migration that hurts the working class and by strengthening the enforcement of our immigration laws.
As you may know, the White House recently released a framework for immigration reform. President Trump’s proposal would provide a 10 to 12-year path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors, while also authorizing $25 billion for border security and enforcement measures and eliminating the flawed Diversity Visa Lottery. Most importantly, this framework would promote nuclear family migration by limiting family sponsorships to spouses and minor children only, ending extended-family chain migration. This proposed reform to the family preference categories is modeled off of the RAISE Act (S. 1720), legislation I introduced last year that would update America’s permanent, legal immigration system to fit the needs of our 21st century economy.
The president's framework is generous and humane, while also being responsible. It protects those eligible for DACA—who are here through no fault of their own—and by securing the border and putting an end to extended-family chain migration, it will prevent us from ending up back in the same situation in five or ten years. This proposal should be the starting point of our discussions over legislation to codify DACA. And I look forward to working with my colleagues to turn the framework into legislation that can pass both the House and the Senate with widespread support.
I’m honored to serve as your senator. You, your family, and our state will remain on my mind and close to my heart in my work. Always feel free to call my office at (202) 224-2353 or visit www.cotton.senate.gov. Be sure to drop by my office and say hello if you ever visit our nation’s capital.
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