For years Congressman Goodlatte, as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has dodged serious immigration reform by claiming we need to fix all our border security problems (real or imagined) first. It’s becoming more and more apparent that he is using this simply to evade his responsibility.

So it’s no surprise that he called President Trump’s latest statement of immigration principles a “serious proposal,” when it is nothing of the kind.

The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration released a list of hard-line immigration principles late Sunday that threaten to derail a deal in Congress to allow hundreds of thousands of younger undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally.

The administration’s wish list includes the funding of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a crackdown on the influx of Central American minors and curbs on federal grants to “sanctuary cities,” according to a document distributed to Congress and obtained by The Washington Post.

The demands were quickly denounced by Democratic leaders in Congress who had hoped to forge a deal with President Trump to protect younger immigrants, known as “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children. Trump announced plans last month to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era program that had provided two-year work permits to the dreamers that Trump called “unconstitutional.”

…..

Trump had said several times over the past month that he did not expect a DACA deal to include funding for a border wall, emphasizing that the money could be included in separate legislation. But ensuring funding for the wall, which is projected to cost more than $25 billion, is the top priority on the list. White House aides declined to specify during the call how much money the president would expect from Congress.

In other words, Trump continues to hold the fate of 690,000 DACA enrollees hostage for his utterly impractical and ridiculously expensive wall fantasy.

As I’m sure even Goodlatte knows, Trump’s “serious proposal” is a complete non-starter.