President Trump offered mixed signals Tuesday about his plans on immigration, suggesting privately that he is open to an overhaul bill that could provide a pathway to legal status — but not citizenship — for potentially millions of people who are in the United States illegally but have not committed serious crimes.
Yet Trump made no mention of such a proposal during his prime-time address to a joint session of Congress, instead highlighting the dangers posed by illegal immigration.
At a private White House luncheon with television news anchors ahead of his speech, Trump signaled an openness to a compromise that would represent a softening from the crackdown on all undocumented immigrants that he promised during his campaign and that his more hard-line supporters have long advocated.
“The time is right for an immigration bill as long as there is compromise on both sides,” Trump told the anchors. His comments, reported by several of the journalists present, were confirmed by an attendee of the luncheon.
Trump said he hopes both sides can come together to draft legislation in his first term that holistically addresses the country’s immigration system, which has been the subject of intense and polarizing debate in Washington for more than a decade. Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both failed in their attempts to push comprehensive immigration reform bills through Congress that offered a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
At the meeting with television anchors, Trump suggested he is willing to address legal status for those who are in the country illegally but have not committed crimes. But he would not necessarily support a pathway to citizenship, except perhaps for “Dreamers,” a group of nearly 2 million who were brought into the country illegally as children, according to a report by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, who attended the luncheon.
