by Rachel Bovard President Trump on Thursday rolled out his administration’s first, substantive take on immigration reform, and the reactions have been what you’d expect. Democrats and some Republicans immediately panned the proposal because it doesn’t provide amnesty to recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (otherwise known as President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty), or to anyone else. Republicans, in general, were more circumspect. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a noncommittal response, with a nod toward the dispute he is currently embroiled in with Democrats, who continue to block the administration’s request for more humanitarian funding at the border. (Yes, the same party who lambasts the president for his supposed lack of humanitarian care for migrants also refuses to give him funding to do exactly that.) But a review of the plan itself, which deals largely with the legal immigration system, suggests that it fills a critical role for Republicans. For years, the GOP has run on “border security first,” and then a “merit-based” immigration with very little agreement on the specifics of what those terms mean. Past Republican proposals, rather, have come in the form of massive, multifaceted plans which die horrible public deaths due to their frontward concessions on amnesty. (Recall the doomed…
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