Here & Now

U.S. Senator Johnson Discusses Trump, Immigration, Opioids

Frederica Freyberg:

In our first look tonight, an interview with Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson. He’s here as fallout from a contentious oval office meeting over an immigration fix, including protection for dreamers, continues to spread. The president rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals last year, but has said he’d be willing to reinstate the program in return for border wall funding. In the midst of a bipartisan meeting of senators with the president on DACA, the president reportedly made incendiary comments over a plan to reinstate temporary protected status programs for El Salvador, Haiti and some African nations, reportedly asking why are we having all these people from bleephole countries come here? Senator Johnson was not among those in the meeting but he too is looking for an immigration fix. He joins us now. Senator, thanks very much for being here.

Ron Johnson:

Happy new year.

Frederica Freyberg:

What is your response to President Trump’s reported comments about the U.S. taking immigrants from bleephole countries referring to some in Africa and others?

Ron Johnson:

Totally inappropriate and he should apologize. When you enter the public realm, I don’t care what your past was, I don’t care what kind of salty language you might have used, you stop doing it. You have a certain responsibility, a certain decorum you need to conduct yourself in public with. You have children watching. You have nations watching. Totally inappropriate, very unfortunate. Because a couple days before that, I think the president showed himself in really a good light with a bipartisan group of senators and house members really trying to find areas of agreement. I hope people take a look at that extended video of that almost cabinet-like meeting, where he did show himself in command. He showed himself listening and you can really see exactly how the process works. You have a principal in charge of the meeting, then you have members of congress. You all get about maybe a minute to make a comment. But you saw an attempt try and find areas of agreement, which is how you actually accomplish things.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let's just back to the other for a moment. You call it unfortunate, but do you condemn it?

Ron Johnson:

Yes. And, again, the best thing he can do is admit it, apologize it and move on. Truthfully, it’s going to be helpful to have the president involved in this, but this is Congress’s responsibility. We have got to pass legislation to fix the dreamer problem, but also to fix our broken legal immigration system as well. I think we have a great opportunity. I think the vast majority of Americans, I think the vast majority of members of congress want to fix the dreamer issue, but also want to secure our border, want to have a legal immigration system that makes sense, where we can start limiting the abuse of chain migration, the diversity lottery that through the combination our last two terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by people who came to this country in some way shape or form that way. So again, there’s common sense approaches I think the American people would support. We need to get back on that and pass the legislation.

Frederica Freyberg:

How does all of what’s blowing up right now affect the possible passage of any of that?

Ron Johnson:

It shouldn’t affect it at all because what President Obama–er, President Trump said a couple days ago was he will sign what we put on his desk. It’s incumbent upon us, senators, house members to come up to that agreement. We’re going to have to hash it out between ourselves.

Frederica Freyberg:

There was an agreement, a bipartisan agreement that was presented to him, and this was the result.

Ron Johnson:

But again, that was with a small group. You know, this was the exact same thing in 2013. I was totally supportive of what the Gang of Eight was doing, but my counsel to them at that same time was work with the House, get the House to pass immigration reform first because in this case it was the higher hurdle. You kind of have to — when you’re looking at a piece of legislation, where’s the choke point? What is the higher hurdle? In this case I think it’s going to be the House. So let’s be working with our house colleagues. There’s another effort with John Cornyn and Steny Hoyer and Dick Durbin, trying to think of the other person involved. But there’s about four of them that are also working. I’m trying to work with all the groups quite honestly. I’m Chairman of Homeland Security, certainly involved in border security issues, as well as the immigration laws as well. So this is a strong attempt by a number of members of Congress including myself to get this thing actually accomplished.

Frederica Freyberg:

I heard Dick Durbin say this morning that he would take this package that was presented in the Oval Office and introduce it in the Senate. How would you vote on that?

Ron Johnson:

I still don’t know the details of their specific package. I think an awful lot of the elements are quite good in there. To a certain extent addresses some of the chain migration issues. But I want to see the details because it is — the devils really are in the details of this. But from my standpoint, we have got to start closing the loopholes created by bad law, bad legal precedent that incentivize people to come to this country illegally. We have to limit chain migration to a common sense level. Right now Frederica, we let about 1.1 million people in this country legally in terms of permanent, legal residence every year. 65% of that is some kind of chain migration. 22% is diversity lottery. Asylum refugees. Only about 14%, 15% has anything to do with work. That is a crazy system, when you have literally millions, probably hundreds of millions of people want to come to this country. We can’t assimilate all those people. We’ve got to limit. We’ve got to limit it on a merit-based system. We’ve got to fix our system.

Frederica Freyberg:

What's regarded or called chain migration is not allowing citizenship based on being sponsored by one’s children. I heard Dick Durbin say that that language, chain migration, is super offensive because it hearkens back to —

Ron Johnson:

It's what people use. It’s not meant to be offensive. It’s just describing something that allows an immigrant to allow in their parents, their children. But what ends up happening is it does chain, where those people then can bring in their children, their parents. All of a sudden one individual and you’ve got cousins and adult children, adult siblings. That’s what we need to limit to something that just makes common sense.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to just go back one more time to the president and his comments and ask you whether or not you believe that those were racist utterances on his part?

Ron Johnson:

I don’t want to put labels on things. It’s just completely inappropriate and he should apologize for it.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. I know that you have worked a lot on the opioid problem, and the president this week, just yesterday or Wednesday —

Ron Johnson:

I was in the signing ceremony.

Frederica Freyberg:

That's right. Didn’t the president there say something about how he has the answer to fix this problem?

Ron Johnson:

I don’t know what he was talking about there. But again there’s a good example of a very bipartisan effort, finding an area of agreement. We all agreed that this opioid problem is a huge problem. This particular bill, INTERDICT Act, authorized and then funded detection devices for fentanyl, which is really becoming dangerous. President Trump before he signed it, allowed every member of Congress in there, I think at least four or five Democrat Senators, Democrat House members, Republicans there, all asked us to make comment. And it really was a very good example of how you accomplish things like you do in the business world. You tenaciously pursue areas of agreement. The problem in politics all too often people exploit areas of division. I’m trying to find those areas of agreement.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. Senator Ron Johnson, thanks very much.

Ron Johnson:

Have a good day.