President Donald Trump on Wednesday opened the door to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children, the first time he’s explicitly said he’d accept a pathway to citizenship for them.
“We’re going to morph into it. It’s going to happen at some point in the future,” Trump said of the immigrants eligible for some version of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump has ended but is urging Congress to replace. He said the time frame would be over 10 to 12 years. The President made his comments to a group of reporters who were meeting with White House chief of staff John Kelly at the White House.
Trump called it an “incentive” for the immigrants, who largely have known no other country beside America, to work hard and do a “great job.”
“If they do a great job, I think it’s a nice thing to have the incentive of, after a period of years, being able to become a citizen,” Trump said.