Update: Here is Breitbart calling this new development a “game changer.”
Signaling that he couldn’t be more serious about getting immigration under control, Presidential candidate Donald Trump has sought out the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, Senator Jeff Sessions, to help craft his immigration policy platform.
Readers know that if I could have waved a magic wand and chosen a Presidential candidate it would be the highly respected and tireless champion for the “national interest,” Senator Sessions, so this is the next best thing! Other Presidential candidates should be beating a path to Senator Sessions’ door but I doubt they are!
From the Washington Post (hat tip: Richard at Blue Ridge Forum). Emphasis below is mine:
Donald Trump will unveil a series of position papers in early September, he said in an interview Friday, beginning with a plan to address immigration policy that was crafted with the counsel of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a favorite of conservative activists and an outspoken border hawk. That document will be followed soon after by his proposal for revamping the U.S. tax code.
“My immigration paper, my tax paper — they’re pretty much done. But I don’t want to do them in August. I’ll wait until September, when everyone is back, in all fairness,” Trump told The Washington Post. “We’ll release a number of them. We’ll start with immigration and then we’ll do tax. Those will be the first two.”
[….]
Trump’s consultation with Sessions, which came in a mid-July phone call, is the latest sign that the celebrity billionaire will continue to take a hard-line stance on immigration, which has rallied many conservatives this summer to his campaign.
Sessions, who is closely aligned with the tea-party wing of the GOP and is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, has argued that lowering legal immigration levels will improve employment prospects for low-wage U.S. workers. He also for years led efforts to increase fencing and barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I like him,” Trump said of Sessions. “Tough guy. I like that. We have a similar thought process.”
More here.
See all of our previous posts on Senator Sessions here. Sessions fought valiantly to defeat the Gang of Eight bill in the Senate that included two of the other GOP candidates as sponsors of the bill—Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham. Just a reminder, here is the NYT crowing about Rubio when the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill passed the Senate by a vote of 68-32 in June 2013.
See Senator Sessions calling out the meatpacking lobby, as one of many business interests looking for cheap immigrant labor, here when the bill passed. As you know, it never got traction in the House. Longtime readers know that BIG MEAT is a driving force behind the refugee resettlement program and many of those companies work closely with the federal resettlement contractors (aka Volags).