WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is offering a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young illegal immigrants but insists on measures that would curb some legal immigration programs and provide a border wall with Mexico, senior White House officials said on Thursday.
The White House offered to more than double the number of “Dreamers” — people brought to the country illegally as children — who would be protected from deportation, describing it as a major concession aimed at attracting enough votes for an immigration deal from Democrats.
But the plan comes with significant strings attached to appeal to Republicans, including requirements to slash family sponsorship of immigrants, tighten border security and provide billions of dollars in funding for a border wall with Mexico that Trump made one of his major campaign promises.
The package was immediately panned by pro-immigration groups, which said the plan was a bad trade-off. It was also slammed by some conservative groups, which decried the expansion of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.
The head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democratic Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, said the Trump plan used Dreamers as “bargaining chips for sweeping anti-immigrant policies.”
Early reaction from Republicans in the Senate — where the plan may receive a vote in early February — was positive. Conservative Republican Senator Tom Cotton called the plan “generous and humane, while also being responsible.” Republicans narrowly control the chamber by 51-49 and need Democratic votes to pass legislation.
The fight over protections for Dreamers, which are set to expire in March, was part of the standoff between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate that resulted in a three-day government shutdown that ended on Monday.
They agreed to extend funding until February 8, leaving a small window to come to a deal on immigration. Trump’s plan will help provide guidance for those talks, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
Negotiations will be tough. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has championed the cause of the Dreamers, said the plan put Trump’s “entire hard-line immigration agenda — including massive cuts to legal immigration — on the backs of these young people.”
Trump, whose tough immigration stance was a key part of his 2016 presidential campaign, said in September he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program for Dreamers that was created by Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.
The DACA protections apply to about 700,000 people, but White House officials said there were at least that many illegal immigrants who qualified for the program but did not sign up for it.
Officials said the 1.8 million people could apply to become citizens in 10 to 12 years providing they had jobs and did not commit crimes.
Trump’s plan would require Congress to set up a $25 billion “trust fund” to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and invest in better protections at the northern border with Canada.
Congress would have to allocate additional money to border guards and immigration judges, a figure that the Republican president pegged at $5 billion on Wednesday, but which White House officials said was up for further discussion.
The White House also wants Congress to change rules to allow for the rapid deportation of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada who arrive at the US border, the officials said.
White House officials made clear that a deal could not only address DACA and the border wall but must also end a visa lottery program for certain countries and limit family sponsorship of immigrants to spouses and minor children — ending sponsorship for parents, older children and siblings.
Stephen Legomsky, who was chief counsel at US Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration, called the plan a “horrendous tradeoff” and predicted Democrats would reject it.
“It offers a one-time citizenship path to innocent Dreamers and expects in return a massive permanent cut to family immigration, the permanent elimination of the entire diversity program, and a huge expenditure for a border wall,” said Legomsky, now at Washington University Law School in St. Louis.
A group of immigrant youth called United We Dream said the deal was “pitting us against our own parents, Black immigrants and our communities.”
Groups that oppose allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the United States also voiced criticism, and urged Congress to take its time.
“While it includes a number of tough immigration enforcement provisions, it includes an amnesty that is more than twice the size of the DACA population,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restrictions.
To become law, the measures would also need to pass the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a bigger majority. A senior White House official declined to speculate on whether the plan would pass the chamber.
“I think the House will have an independent vehicle,” the second official said. “We’re not trying to force something on the House.”
Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican Cuban-American from Miami and longtime advocate of immigration reform, praised Trump for putting forward a “serious proposal.”
Democratic Representative Luis Gutiérrez said, however, that the plan “doesn’t pass the laugh test.
“It would be far cheaper to erect a 50-foot concrete statue of a middle finger and point it toward Latin America, because both a wall and the statue would be equally offensive and equally ineffective,” the Illinois lawmaker said on Twitter.
Trump offers ‘Dreamers’ a path to US citizenship, but wants other immigration curbs
Trump offers ‘Dreamers’ a path to US citizenship, but wants other immigration curbs
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
