Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) urged the GOP-led Congress to push harder for President Donald Trump’s immigration priorities and install legal, “permanent fixes” to the current system even as Democrats continually resist them.

In an interview on “The Laura Ingraham Show,” Brat noted that Republicans are pushing hard for Trump’s proposed tax reform measures to boost the economy and offer overly burdened Americans relief. At the same time, the Republicans and Democrats are struggling to agree on immigration reform measures that would satisfy Democrats by protecting illegal immigrants while satiating hard-line conservatives’ calls for border wall funding, E-Verify legislation, and stricter enforcement measures. As a result, the momentum behind Trump’s immigration demands has waned while tax reform has taken the front seat.

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Although Trump and the GOP are focusing heavily on tax reform this week, Brat urged them to continue to push for the immigration platform the president campaigned on so successfully in 2016. Pointing to Stephen Miller — Trump’s senior policy adviser — and his commitment to pushing for the president’s immigration agenda, he said it is time for Congress to prioritize U.S. citizens and their welfare above all else.

“[Miller] says, ‘Why do Democrats and some of the Republican Party pay more attention to non-U.S. citizens than we do to the welfare of U.S. citizens?'” Brat said. “And if you stop and think about that, that is the only formulation that matters, right?”

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“Mandatory E-Verify, which just makes employers track whether they have legal workers … will solve the immigration issue, the illegal immigration issue particularly, because people will self-deport. If there are no jobs, no one comes here,” he argued. “That is a permanent structure.”

Noting that the word “permanent” is the most important legal aspect of immigration reform, Brat said that the country suffered when companies flagrantly hired illegal immigrants for their cheap labor and when former presidents picked and chose which policies and guidelines to follow, enforce and emphasize.

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“Right now, a lot of firms are doing this on a voluntary basis, right?” Brat said. “So E-Verify, if you have mandatory E-Verify, it’s in law — all firms will have to validate they’re hiring legal citizens, right? Not illegal. And that will solve the problem.”

“That’s why E-Verify is one piece that’s being left out of [Congress’] conversation,” he continued. “They’ll mention interior enforcement and adding more [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers, etc. And they all are great. They do their job. But if you have an executive like President Obama come in who tells them not to do their job, that’s the problem.”

“That’s why you need permanent fixes. The wall is permanent, E-verify is permanent, and those ending chain migration is permanent, and we need to put that into law,” Brat added. “So those are the big moves.”

(photo credit, homepage images: Dave Brat, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article images: Dave Brat, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)