White House readies immigration plan amid uproar over Trump’s ‘go back’ remarks

Washington Post logoAs the uproar over President Trump’s racist remarks demanding four minority Democratic lawmakers “go back [to countries] from which they came” continued to flare Tuesday, the White House prepared to roll out a plan that would detail the type of immigrants the administration wants to admit to the United States.

But the ongoing controversy over Trump’s comments got in the way of the White House’s initial plans, as a late-afternoon meeting with a half-dozen congressional Republican leaders on the administration’s new immigration bill was abruptly postponed amid an unexpectedly drawn-out fight on the floor of the House as lawmakers debated condemning Trump’s racist tweets.

That interruption Tuesday is far from the only obstacle the White House will face this year as it tries to generate momentum for its new immigration plan, which aims to reorient the current legal immigration system to one based primarily on an immigrant’s ability to contribute to the economy, rather than on family ties.

View the complete July 16 article by Seung Min Kim on The Washington Post website here.