President Donald Trump suggested Sunday night that he could OK an amnesty for many migrants now working in jobs that would otherwise be held by Americans. The interview was conducted shortly before he fired his establishment-minded chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and replaced her with his pro-American populist adviser, Stephen Miller. “I’d love to do something about immigration,” Trump told CBS’s 60 Minutes, as he sketched an amnesty deal with pro-migration Democrats:
Get the killers out. Get all the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for ten and 15 years, work a deal for them.
Illegal migrants who are working in jobs could stay, he suggested:
Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there’s a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or workin’ in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes. And there’s a large group of people who think that they should be allowed to stay.
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That’s something that’s actually doable … When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that’s worked there, you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lotta good things, great jobs, and all of a sudden, they’re being taken outta the country, it’s tough. It’s a tough thing.
