this week watch book tv in prime time on c-span2. >> from the white house breeding scheduled to start one minute to go, 1:45 p.m. eastern time and we will have live coverage when it does begin. until then today's washington journal. >> were joined by the white house reporter, brian bennett here to talk about the trumpet ministration what they would like to see done with so-called dreamers. a seven page document release immigration policies could you tell us why the trump administration put out this document and what they hope it

adds to the conversation about dreamers? >> this goes back to when president trump was ending the daca program that protected around 800,000 young people brought here illegally into the country and gave them work permits and when president trump ended that he said that we want congressalit to act with this gp of people and that is when the permits began to expire in march and that the deadline that basically has been set for congress and president trump said i will lay out some pistols that i want to see in d legislation to protect this group of people and we will provide that for congress and i think members of congress are looking for something more specific and narrow, with white house put out on sunday is like, as you said, seven pages long. it really is a wish list of acts for changing college the. >> it's a big task. >> is a wish list by immigration

hardliners and it touches almost every aspect of immigration policy from building a border wall to increasing deportation nations. >> some of the things specifically are laid out a lot deal with the border initially when the president had a meeting with the house minority leader and the senate minority leader one of the things they talked about was the border wall and what was said at that meeting and what ended up in the final document and do they match the next they do not match. at least according to nancy pelosi and chuck schumer, who had that meeting in the white house in the oval office where they said they came to an agreement with president trump that they would push through a lot like the dream act to protect the population of people from being removed from the country and trump said he wouldn't insist on building the border wall but the border wall in this seven page document is the first item on the list. so, pelosi and schumer said that would be a nonstarter in the negotiations we would see but

this really reads like an opening salvo and like an extreme position to put out and negotiating. it generates negotiating leverage. >> we will talk about some of the details of the proposals from the white house and what it does for dreamers overall with brian bennett. if you want to ask a question (202)748-8000 for republicans, independents, [inaudible] 2,027,488,003 for the for the [inaudible] it would also ensure a swift return for illegal border crossers and would hire 10000 more ice officers and enhance state local cooperation with federal immigration law and enforcement. please talk about how this place to the larger immigration issues

that the white house want to tackle. >> the big picture that the want to talk about is if were going to sign off on a program that would permanently legalize this groupen of 700, 8000 people we would put in strict controls to ensure that we don't get in position later where we have a large influx of immigrants coming c in again. aside to that they lay these things out in one of those things is to build a physical structure and there's a debate over whether that would make a difference in flow and the other thing is to triple the number of deportation officers inside the united states. the idea there is to create a deterrent and basically raise up the threat of deportation and by putting more officers on the street they will appear into the immigrant community so more are willing to come into the country

legally. there's a number of things, for example, cracking down on city policies so there are cities like los angeles and chicago that have said we are not going to enforce immigration and if the federal government demands we do that then it creates a rift between in this proposal would say we should cut down federal grants that don't cooperate. >> you talked about this being in open [inaudible] what could they give on? >> guest: at this point we don't know, lawmakers, republican lawmakers on the hill look at this long list and they feel this is a menu of options that they can pick and choose from and certainly some of the restriction is to the grecian

groups have said all those important items are mandatory and the other thing they really want is to end with what they call chain migration. change our immigration system so that people who are allowed to come into the country can be sponsored by relatives later on to come in legally. >> brian bennett joining us for the los angeles times to talk about these efforts from the white house dreamers and daca recipients. john starts his office 20. he is in florida, republican line, john you are on with brian bennett. go ahead. >> caller: obama created this problem wherere he took my

grandkids and great grandkids dream away from them and gave it to a bunch of illegal aliens and i don't have anybody to treat my kids right and i was a thousand% for trump but i don't want him to negotiate my kids rights on these illegals. they should be deported along with their parents. medical school and they had one on that hearing and they had a run and a nurse in medical school and they took our american citizens kids and allow the illegal aliens to jump around and back in the 50s and 60s i didn't want an illegal alien with me in the foxhole. >> host: all right, john, you put a lot out there. >> guest: president trump tapped into the campaign where there

are americans who feel that they are being pushed out of the workforce and this is something the trump administration says there is a major motivation for them to try to clampdown on immigration and to try to in their view it would raise wages. some economists differ on that and their different opinions that look at the economy and say actually having this influx of workers has allowed businesses to grow and there are some o people who feel that those low skill jobs wouldn't be taken by american workers necessarily so, this is something the trump administration has been pushing hard on and they believe that by cracking down on immigration they can raise wages and address those concerns that the caller is brought up. when it comes to the recipients of the dreamers these are people

that 800,000 people were brought here to this country as minors, as kids by their family members and many of them don't speak the language in their home country they don't know their home country and feel like it would be incredibly alienating, isolating if they were deported back. >> host: this is from carrie in north carolina. >> caller: good morning, gentlemen. on the i'm the grandson of illegal immigrants came through ellis island roughly 100 years ago, czechoslovakia, eastern europe, hungary so we all know the history so basically they had sponsors and they had to be medically cleared and there wasn't a welfare state at the time and you pretty much were on your own. you had to have a job and you had to have community, church and family support to launch at the time.merica the american taxpayer was not on

the hook for you. fast-forward. i grew up in a diverse neighborhood, italians, lithuanians, eastern european jews, russian and so on and so forth. no, everyone was american and everyone wanted to be un-american and everyone is proud to be american. fast-forward another 30 years. since under ronald reagan again what was promised and never delivered by the left, by the democrats was border security, immigration restrictions, to grant the amnesty at the time which was, i think, roughly 3 million illegal immigrants at the time were granted permanent amnesty. again, i think there were provisions in the sense that called for and i'm not sure if they called for a wall but enhanced border security and immigration law and customs enforcement and so on. never happened. fast-forward to george bush and

pretty much the same thing there and i think the law was passed there with regards to funding the border wall, building the border wall, never happened. >> host: what would you like our guest to address? >> caller: i like him to address that this isis another lucy and linus or lucy and charlie brown scenario for the football. let's stop with the immigrants. let's address it as illegal immigration. that is where theat problem lie. >> host: mike, thanks. >> guest: the cause color raises the concern that over the last 30 years there have been a lot of conservatives who feel like this has played out before and there's been a proposal on the table to legalize large population of people and it didn't come with additional restrictions in place to prevent illegal immigration in the future. so, here you haveal a situation where donald trumpmp has said ad he is the prophetic to this population of people, people who were brought here as children through no fault of their own and raised here and yet he's under a tremendous amount of pressure to couple a proposal to

protect them with really strict immigration enforcement and we will see that debate play out. >> host: so it's a legislative vehicle that matches that and what is the chance of that passing. >> guest: there is no single vehicle that does everything. this reads like a massive confidence of immigration reform package and it's very unlikely that all of these consoles will be put into one bill. there's a number of proposals out there to raise -- for example, senator cotten has advanced and that would reshape our immigration system which currently favors family unification and they would turn it into a merit-based system to select people coming into the country based on their skills and businesses. there are several other proposals out there that take pieces of what the white house has suggested and demanded they want so there isn't exactly one

bill. i know there are groups in the house and senate discussing how to move forward on this and what to couple with what but there is also a financial deadline on december 8 and there will be a debate about funding the government and there's a must pass bill on december 8 and it's possible that actions for dreamers to be talked into that in addition to some border security spending that would be a way to get votes. >> host: and in the raise act there's a line about this merit being a point system for immigration. could you talk about what that is and is this a change from what we have previously seen when it comes to green cards. >> guest: the merit-based proposal is a total change from how the us immigration system has worked last five decades. it would send instead of favoring relatives who have already arrived here and it would basically create a point system based on someone's education level and what the

current what the government sees as the current economy and award green cards on that basis. people who like it point to canada and australia and feel like they have done a similar system and made it work. the critics of it say that it goes against long-standing american values. >> for the los angeles times joining us. connecticut next. this is bill. go ahead. >> caller: thank you for c-span. i wanted to say a a couple of things. number one, trump, all he had to do about not right was reversed obama's greenback, just reverse

it, not taken down the road to congress. my other thing, both parties, the establishment, they want all these people coming end. it's like the "grapes of wrath." they want cheap help. remember how in steinbeck book they paid him one dollar an hour, then they brought more okies income of $.50 an hour, a quarter of an hour. that's what's going on. i want to throw one thing and, we feel left out. everybody else is getting help bias. i don't know why a soldier only gives $10,000 a year when he gets killed on the battlefield. his family loves him just as much as say a victim from something, , or i can see why somebody is getting $4 million for calling someone a name. >> host: leave it there. >> guest: president trump could have just ended daca outright. he has the power as president to indent on one day and not set up

a six-month timeline. the fact is he has into the program. as of a week ago the administration stop receiving its applications for renewals for this to your work permits. those permits expire on march 5. over the coming come out of the two years after that, all of the existing 700,000-8 and 1000 work permits will expire and the program will sunset entirely. that is fact. that's what's happening. that's what has been set in motion by donald trump and the administration. this programs come to an end. at the sun-times is ask others to fix of a cogs doesn't have to act and is highly possible that won't be able to get their act together before march or before, what will happen in march which is when some of the people will start losing their jobs on a rolling basis. >> host: the president calling

out democrats office everything he set out a a tweet saying the problem with the green to a policy on immigration that the democrats don't want to secure border to fiddle care about safety for the usa. >> guest: should the democrats would take issue with that characterization. i think they look at some of security proposals, such as building a wall across the entire southern border and say look him our money could be better spent than doing that. they will find a way to get around the wall. and then there's a larger question, which is how much money do we want to spend tracking down people and deporting them? right now there's about 5000 deportation officers and country. the trump administration administration wants that to be 15,000. and the people who live in small communities that have large immigration population, some people want to see immigrants

illegally or deported. others can recognize that would disrupt the fabric of the community that large-scale deportations would end up closing small shops and businesses that cater to those communities, and businesses would have a hard time finding workers in some areas. >> host: for their part, nancy pelosi and chuck schumer putting out a statement yesterday. this is part, with all the president at our meeting that we were open to reasonable border security, and goes on from there it talks about what they were looking for. at least for their part they're saying look, we are open to compromise on this. >> guest: i think the democrats are open to spending more on border security. i think the red line for them would be reshaping the immigration system, would be a tough pill for them to swallow to go to these merit-based proposals. i also think the democrats would

have a hard time increasing interior enforcement because of what that would do to emigrate community around the country. >> host: let's hear from mary from south carolina, republican line. >> caller: my name is mary, and i want to say i am all for the daca children being allowed to stay in this country, something because of the fact that they were raised here. made a note in other life. how can you send them back to el salvador or mexico and expect them to survive when they been raised in a completely different way? at the same time i would deport their parents and not turn here because i'm tired of people come into our country and telling us what we have to do. this is our country. when i came here, when my people came here, they came here in 1749. they spoke german. they had to learn to be an american, and we are americans now, and we don't want that. i don't think we should have to

pay for all these people that keep coming in here and bringing their children, like the poor daca children, and went to raise them, school them, pay for their housing sometimes in their food, and their medical care. hey, no wonder our infrastructure has went to hell. because we're spending money for other people and i don't believe in chain migration because my family didn't cover that way. they came as family units and they made a life here. that's all i have to say, but i am a trump supporter, delete. thank you. >> guest: this question of chain migration something donald trump has said, he twittered out a few weeks ago that if the was a deal on daca, to protect the dreamers, it could include chain migration which would basically mean if there were a lot of past the deferred the daca program or gruesome sort of legalization program for dreamers, that some of trump would insist the law

included provision at once as people became u.s. citizens, that it would not be able to sponsor their relatives to come into the country legally and we will have to see how that plays out. >> host: from daniel in west virginia. democrat's line. your next. >> caller: thank you for c-span. the problem i'm having is where the including legal immigration? in this package, , when first of all they know that illegal immigrants who comment are very high skilled and the computer immensely to the u.s. economy. but also create jobs by starting small businesses. why would they include legal immigration when we happen aging population. who is going to be paying for social security if at the rate which the american population is aging if we don't have legal immigrants who will come into our young, who are starting businesses, who are also

contributing at the very high level to the economy? why are they included, including legal immigration went to other presidents wives are immigrants themselves. so i mean, they are saying legal immigrants should not be able to sponsor family members. can you tell me which ones of malign his family members we would want to keep away from the united states treasury this is what's really interesting about trump pushing back on this proposal is that it not only tackles concerns about immigrants come into the country legally but it also lays out a very new proposal for restricting legal immigration. so it would eliminate, for example, diversity visa lottery, which has brought about 500,000 people from africa, for example, over the last few decades.

and it was designed in order to open up the green card lottery to more people from around the country, give people even if they didn't come from western europe, didn't have a college degree, more people opportunities to come to the united states and start a small business and make a life for themselves here. so reshaping that would be a change in american approach to immigration. the bigger picture that the trump administration talks about when it comes to legal immigration, the u.s. currently admits about 1 million people year legally in the country, and with green cards, permanent resident green cards, they would like to see those numbers go down. there is a concern that top administration officials have expressed immigrants not being able to simulate in the u.s.

and again there's a long-standing tradition of immigrants simulating and the debate the country needs to have is what our prayers of the country and what do we want our immigration system to do? >> host: the president is trying to get gain support. how do things like a back-and-forth spat he's having with bob corker on the senate side how does that impact multiply the support he will get for what he wants to see legislatively? >> guest: picking fights with people in your own party is not going to generate more support for him. one thing trump does is when he's pushed he pushes back really hard. the spat with corker, senator corker, is in line with that. he tries to lay out a strong position and doesn't like it when people in his own party push back on that. and we will have to see. he did play a round of golf with lindsey graham yesterday,

senator graham, who has been a critic of trump immigration positions, and we will have to see in future if that for any food, avs able to make any deal of that drama do you know specifically if they discuss that yesterday? >> guest: they did in addition to north korea and iran. but we don't know what came out of those talks. >> host: from her independent line from illinois, henrietta. go ahead. >> caller: good morning, c-span, and thank you. i'm not against immigration, but legal immigration. first of all, the people from the latin countries, they come here, they have been a 15 to 20 years. it'll even speak our language. they carried their flags. weber american flags. they don't tell me -- if you go to substitute office, you have interpreters. why in american do you have to speak spanish?

you go over to mexico or guatemala, you have to learn their language. these people don't care about america. they don't even come like a said they don't even try to learn the language. i've seen them. they've been your 1520, 25 years, still no english. no. and as far as the border wall, don't a board of water just put electricity in the fence that they have. >> guest: this is again a long-standing debate in the united states what are we as a country? there've been people in the united states have rejected ways of immigrants in the past. there were laws passed 100 years ago to try to stop the weight of chinese immigrants who come in, providing cheap labor to build the railways. there's been backlash against italians, against irish immigrants in the past. the question that country faces out is over in a totally different error or is this a similar to past moments when it

immigrants in the country where there was a backlash against immigration, i mean it immigrants, i fear it would assimilate but then decades later found that the children still didn't assimilate to the country. this is that they will have to over the next several months about the character of the country. >> host: darrell louisiana on our democrat's line. >> caller: thank you. i've been listening to what they call these people. who are these people? who are these people? they're talking about human beings, peoples lives. that's what you're talking about. and douglas some can't get and you are not speak english. they need to go to the wiki in. they people in louisiana that still speaks french, no english. on the american citizens? yes, they are. just because somebody comes here and speaks another language, they are not an american citizen? these people, they got a label?

we've got to come together as a country. we've got to come together as human beings. we've got to come together as one. >> host: thank you. have any legislator come out and also support of what the president has proposed principles wise and was looking to to gain support or at least rally support? >> guest: there are members of congress particularly in the house who fully support the entire list of things the president has put out. i have checked but i'm sure that the chairman of the house judiciary committee is in favor of these proposals. the question is can he can yout traction, looking to past? there is a group in the house that paul ryan is tasked with putting together a bill. i don't think about it every single single thing in the seven-page document. they will pick and choose like they're taking from the menu.