Hardliners Think Trump has Unfinished Immigration Business

RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — 

One issue that President Donald Trump's hard-line supporters care most about is immigration.

While the president has signed three executive orders on the subject, he has said nothing about the so-called dreamers, undocumented young people who were brought to the U.S. as children and protected under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program or DACA.

The immigration restrictionists are not happy.

“DACA must be ended,” wrote Ronald W. Mortenson last month for a Center for Immigration Studies blog.

“We fully expect them to do so,” wrote Roy Beck of Numbers USA, announcing an end-DACA Twitter campaign in January.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, William Gheen is taking protest a step further. President of his own political action committee, Americans for Legal Immigration, Gheen says he was an early endorser of the president.

But if Trump does not end DACA in a matter of days, ALIPAC will withdraw its support.

“If he can't be trusted to keep his promises on immigration, he can't be trusted on anything,” Gheen said. “And that was the issue that put him over the top.”

While Trump promised unequivocally to undo DACA during his campaign, he later said as president that it was a “very, very tough” issue for him.

Gheen is giving the president until April 15th to do away with DACA, not an arbitrary deadline since April 15th is the annual deadline for Americans to file their taxes. It makes the symbolic point that Gheen does not want any DACA recipients getting any benefits paid for by taxpayers.

“We want DACA illegal immigrants prevented from receiving jobs, government benefits, welfare, and any other taxpayer resource, and we want them deported when detected by law enforcement during their routine duties,” he said.
DACA recipients don't, in fact, receive taxpayer-funded benefits. “They don't have access to means such as welfare benefits or anything like that,” confirms Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst for the Cato Institute. “They, of course, have to pay taxes like they usually did before.”

Source: Associated Press (www.voanews.com )