Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Tuesday he’ll oppose a clean extension to the Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals program and pressed lawmakers to consider provisions of his bill to curb legal immigration as part of a reform package.
The statement comes after the Trump administration announced a six-month phase out to allow Congress to determine how to address the issue.
Cotton said it is the legislative branch’s responsibility to deal with the situation instead of the executive branch, but Congress should not extend the DACA program due to “chain migration” and encouraging future illegal immigration into the U.S. He told the Washington Examiner he believes those covered by DACA should be allowed to stay.
“Dealing with this problem is a legislative task, not an executive-branch task,” Cotton said in a statement. “But we must recognize that codifying the DACA program will have two negative consequences: encouraging future illegal immigration with minors and allowing those 800,000 people to obtain legal status for their family members via chain migration, which rewards the very people who broke the law in the first place and further depresses working-class wages.”
“Thus, we must mitigate these consequences by stopping the chain migration that hurts the working class and by strengthening the enforcement of our immigration laws,” Cotton added.
In the process, Cotton became the first Republican senator to oppose an extension of the program.
Instead, the Arkansas Republican called on lawmakers to consider the RAISE Act, which would curb legal immigration into the U.S. Cotton and Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., introduced the bill in early August at the White House.
“These should be the starting point of our discussions, and I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to come up with a deal that protects American workers,” Cotton said.
