Senate Democrats “are held hostage by the radical left in their party, which opposes any immigration control at all,” said a White House statement slamming the Democrats who blocked President Donald Trump’s amnesty-and-reform compromise on February 15.

The toughly worded statement says President Donald Trump will next ask the House to pass the Goodlatte bill which endorses his pro-American immigration policies, but it also suggests that Trump will emphasize the Democrats’ radical open-border policies during the midterm elections.

The statement said:

Today, the [Sen. Chuck] Schumer Democrats in the Senate demonstrated again that they are not serious about DACA, they are not serious about immigration reform, and they are not serious about homeland security.  They filibustered a proposal with an extremely generous path to citizenship [for 1.8 million illegals] because it also contained reforms that secured our border and secured our immigration system.

The [Sen. Chuck] Grassley bill was a compromise bill—as demonstrated by the fact that some conservatives opposed its very generous DACA provisions.  Yet, the Schumer Democrats chose to filibuster it because they are held hostage by the radical left in their party, which opposes any immigration control at all.  Today, they sided with an extreme fringe over the hardworking men and women of the Department of Homeland Security.

The White House plan was defeated 39 to 60 votes during the afternoon, largely because only three Democrats voted for the legislation. Under Senate rules, each proposal needed 60 votes for passage.

Democrats oppose the Trump plan because it would install a border wall, close up legal loopholes used by migrants to get into the United States and raise Americans’ wages by reducing the annual inflow of legal immigrants via ending the visa lottery and gradually shutting down chain-migration.

Progressives and ethnic lobbies have bitterly opposed Trump’s plan because it would also gradually reduce the inflow of migrants who favor the Democratic Party’s redistributionist policies. Progressive groups say Trump’s proposed 2018 policy change is racist because it would partially reverse the 1965 immigration rewrite of the 1924 immigration laws.

Sen. Tom Cotton also slammed the Democrats for blocking the Grassley bill.

Fourteen GOP Senators also voted against the Trump plan, partly because business groups fear it would help Trump’s deputies nudge up wages by reducing the supply of cheap labor over the next decade.

The White House statement continued:

The Administration will continue advocating for an immigration package that includes border security, ending chain migration, cancelling the visa lottery, and a reasonable DACA solution—a proposal Americans support overwhelmingly.  And while radical Schumer Democrats align themselves with the open border fringe, the Trump Administration will continue advocating for the American people. The next step will be for the House to continue advancing the proposal from Chairman Goodlatte and Chairman McCaul.

The pending bill by Rep. Bob Goodlatte and Rep. Michael McCaul includes Trump’s immigration priorities, such as ending the chain-migration and visa-lottery programs. It does not offer a full citizenship amnesty to DACA illegals but instead offers them renewable work-permits. The bill makes E-Verify mandatory for employers but offers agriculture companies a new supply of contract-workers to replace illegal immigrants.

However, the Goodlatte bill is a long way from approval. It has the support of more than 150 Republicans in the House, but it needs support from at least 216 legislators to win a majority vote.

In the round of Senate votes on February 15, eight Republicans voted for the Democrats’ main amnesty bill, which was credited to the Democrat-dominated “Common Sense Coalition.” The amnesty bill was strongly supported by the Democratic leaders, according to Democratic Sen. Chris Coons.

The eight pro-amnesty GOP Senators were led by Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Jeff Flake, but also included Maine Sen. Susan Collins, South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Tennesee Sen. Lamar Alexander, and Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson. The Democrats’ anti-enforcement measure was also supported by GOP Sen. Cory Gardner, who is actually the chairman of the GOP Senators’ 2018 election campaign.

The eight GOP Senators voted for the Democrats’ bill even though the legislation imposed an effective legal amnesty for 12 million illegals by directing immigration enforcement officials to largely ignore illegals immigrants who arrived before January 1, 2018.

Sen. Rounds told reporters that the “central point” of the bill was to help younger illegals — who numbers reach up to 3 million  — even though many polls show that Americans believe immigration policy is primarily intended to help Americans and their children, before helping business or illegals.

“The one thing that polling shows most consistently across the board that Americans prefer immigration policy that encourages employers to raise wages and improve working conditions in America,” a White House official told Breitbart News.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the reported leader of the Common Sense Coalition, hotly defended the bill’s prioritization amnesty in a press conference before the vote:

Many polls show that Trump’s 2016 immigration policies are very popular in the polling booth.

Immigration polls which ask people to pick a priority, or to decide which options are fair, show that voters in the polling booth put a high priority on helping their families and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Those results are very different from the “Nation of Immigrants” polls which are funded by CEOs and progressives, and which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.