WASHINGTON, DC — President Donald Trump says the current legal immigration system, based almost entirely on family-based chain migration, is “a disaster for this country and it’s horrible.”

During an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Trump slammed chain migration in which newly naturalized immigrants to the United States have been readily allowed to bring their extended relatives, spouses, and children to the country, causing a boom in the foreign-born population — 44 million immigrants now reside in the U.S. — while keeping American wages stagnant and forcing working and middle-class Americans to compete with cheaper, foreign workers for jobs.

“I don’t think any Republican would vote for anything having to do with leaving chain migration,” Trump said in the interview. “Chain migration is a disaster for this country and it’s horrible.”

.@POTUS: "Chain migration is a disaster for this country, and it's horrible." | Catch the full interview TONIGHT at 10p ET on @FoxNews. pic.twitter.com/0It6tw2rWI — Fox News (@FoxNews) November 2, 2017

Trump noted that an end to chain migration must be included in a deal for 800,000 illegal aliens who are shielded by the Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced will be terminated in March 2018.

A deal on DACA where illegal aliens obtain permanent amnesty to remain in the U.S. would be contrary to Trump’s previous statements opposing all amnesties for illegal aliens. It would also likely be opposed by Trump’s populist-economic nationalist base, which enthusiastically supports a pro-American immigration reform agenda that includes fines for businesses who hire illegal aliens, the construction of a border wall, an end to chain migration, and a reduction of legal immigration levels.

Currently, the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million foreign nationals a year. The vast majority of those immigrants come to the U.S. through chain migration, while others pour across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mass immigration to the U.S. over the course of the last four decades has supplied big business and multinational corporations with a permanent underclass of cheap, foreign workers — often times illegally in the U.S. — who have filled American blue-collar job markets like the agricultural and food industries.