No "Legal Status" Compromise For Undocumented Immigrants From Trump

President Trump

After surprising many with his flirtation yesterday afternoon with possible legal status for undocumented immigrants, the idea was not included in President Trump's address to a joint sessions of Congress.

Many are curious about what happened between Trump's lunch with TV news anchors and the actual speech in the Capitol last night.

From the New York Times:

The session with the television anchors started out as a nod to tradition by a president who has broken so many. Like his predecessors on the day of a State of the Union address, Mr. Trump hosted the journalists for what was supposed to be an unrecorded lunch to give them a sense of what he would tell Congress. But the conversation took a surprising turn when some of the anchors asked about his efforts to deport many of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. Without being prompted, Mr. Trump then raised the idea of legislation, noting that there had not been any comprehensive law passed by Congress on the subject since Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program in the 1980s.

He told the anchors it was time for a bill that would grant legal status to many of those in the country illegally as long as both sides compromised, similar to the legislation sought but never passed by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Mr. Trump said he recognized that it would cause him political problems with his conservative base voters, according to people in the room, but added that he thought he could keep them happy since they had stuck with him throughout last year’s Republican primaries.

When Mr. Trump offered the idea, he let the word “compromise” hang in the air, gauging the reaction. He then turned to Hope Hicks, his director of strategic communications, and suggested that the thought could be added to his speech.

As Mr. Trump’s words settled over the State Dining Room, the president’s aides glanced at one another. They moved quickly to alert Mr. Bannon and Mr. Miller, two of the main keepers of Mr. Trump’s address before Congress.

And there, we find the answer: Bannon and Miller were not about to allow their protege some kind of political compromise. "Compromise" has yet to be added to this administration's vocabulary.

Most political experts, when they heard of the idea being floated, did not buy into such prospects.

And now you know why.