TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP POSITION CHANGES: “President Trump said on Wednesday [1-24-18] that he is open to a path to citizenship after 10 to 12 years for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, days after rejecting a bipartisan plan with that as its centerpiece.
Mr. Trump once again seemed to undercut his administration’s message, telling reporters at the White House that he would allow the young immigrants, known as Dreamers, to ‘morph into’ citizens over a period of time.
The reporters had gathered for a briefing from a senior official detailing the administration’s plans to stick to a restrictive immigration agenda when the president dropped in unprompted, shortly before departing for Davos, Switzerland, pre-empting the official…
In addition to suggesting a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers, Mr. Trump said that he would request $25 billion to build a wall along the United States border with Mexico, though he said he would build it ‘way under budget.’ He also said that his plan would include a request for $5 billion for additional security measures along the border.
The fate of the Dreamers is at the center of a furious stalemate in Congress, where Republicans and Democrats are struggling to find a compromise. Mr. Trump’s positions have been difficult to discern, vacillating between his expressions of sympathy for the DACA recipients and his hard-line demands for a crackdown on illegal immigrants.”
-Maggie Haberman, Katie Rogers, and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Says He Is Open to a Path to Citizenship for ‘Dreamers’,” The New York Times online, Jan. 24, 2018