Everyone's Ready to Hate Kushner's Immigration Plan

Jared Kushner hasn’t even finished his proposal to overhaul our immigration system, let alone presented it to his boss and father-in-law, but anti-immigration groups are already bemoaning how weak it’ll be compared to white nationalist and Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller’s terrifying work.

According to CNN today, Kushner has for months met with immigration groups and worked on this proposal, which a senior administration told the outlet last month will focus on border security and legal immigration.

While Kushner’s policy reportedly includes constructing border wall and modernizing ports of entry, it will also protect the rights of migrants and mind due process (though detention, court hearings, and removal processes will still be exercised), according to the network. Kushner’s policy will also be focused on keeping the level of legal immigration at the same rate while working toward a merit-based immigration system.

And while none of the policy has been made public yet, anti-immigrant groups are already complaining that they won’t get their jollies. From CNN:

“We’re not expecting to be happy,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a group that advocates for reduced immigration.

[…]

For Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies — a group that supports reduced immigration, taking on an all-encompassing approach could sink it before it goes anywhere.

“If we want to implement something that’s going to work, it needs to be done in the proper sequence. The urgent problem needs to be taken care of first,” Vaughan said, referring to the southern border, which has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people apprehended by the US Border Patrol.

“Our top concerns are that the proposal will try to bite off more than reasonably can be chewed,” she added.

Of course, if even the anti-immigrant crowd isn’t happy, immigration advocacy groups certainly won’t be either. Specifically, some advocacy groups told CNN they’re concerned Kushner will try to change laws that help protect migrant children, including the Flores Agreement, which mandates that children be held in detention no longer than 20 days (which the Trump Administration has tried to change before). From CNN again:

“We feel like children need to be protected at the border, that you need to have a process in place like we do under current law that children are protected,” said Kerri Talbot, director of Federal Advocacy at the Immigration Hub, an immigrant advocacy organization.

“We’ll be looking out for whether the proposal complies with basic child protection standards: Is it compliant or is this a way to legitimize a way to not comply?” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, which advocates for displaced women and children.

But sure, these are totally equitable concerns between two opposite factions of the immigration debate—worries that we’re not cutting off ports of entry to enough people versus issues with how children might go unprotected.

Kushner acknowledged the difficulty of his task of making all the worst people happy at the Time 100 Summit last week.

“I said if I can get Stephen Miller and Kevin Hassett to agree on an immigration plan, then Middle East peace will be easy by comparison,” he said.

Regardless of how unhappy anti-immigration groups might feel now, it’s not hard to figure out exactly who will be hurt the most by this administration’s policies every single time.