President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney says House Speaker Paul Ryan’s omnibus spending bill that does not include any money for a border wall is a “really, really good immigration package.”
Mulvaney, a long-time proponent of imported foreign workers and amnesty for illegal aliens, praised the immigration components of the House-passed Republican spending bill, despite the legislation not including any of Trump’s pro-American immigration reform efforts.
Mulvaney told POLITICO:
There’s some other things we asked for that we did not get. There’s some limitations on [the Department of Homeland Security] that Congress put in the bill that we don’t particularly care for. But, generally speaking, we think this is a really, really good immigration package. [Emphasis added]
The spending bill is directly at odds with Trump’s popular pro-American immigration agenda, and Republican voters say a reduction in overall immigration levels is more important than tax cuts, replacing Obamacare, and even destroying the Islamic State (ISIS).
For example, the spending bill:
- Does not fund any of Trump’s proposed border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border
- Only allocates funding for 33 miles of southern border fencing
- Expands the H-2B visa program to import about 100,000 foreign workers to take U.S. blue-collar jobs
- Continues funding sanctuary city jurisdictions that protect criminal illegal aliens
- Does not allow for an increase in federal immigration officers
- Does not allow for more detention centers to house illegal aliens while they await trial
- Does not reduce legal immigration levels to raise the wages of America’s working and middle class
While not funding Trump’s wall to stop illegal immigrants from pouring across the southern border, the spending bill does include about $1.8 billion that Defense Secretary James Mattis can use to increase border security for the countries of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia.
As Mulvaney praised the immigration portions of the GOP spending bill, so did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Breitbart News noted.
Pelosi congratulated Democrats in getting Republicans and the Trump administration to sign off on the spending bill without it including any of Trump’s pro-American immigration reform efforts.
“Democrats won explicit language restricting border construction to the same see-through fencing that was already authorized under current law,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The bill does not allow any increase in deportation officers or detention beds.”
The spending bill now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate for approval.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.