An advance press briefing last week teased that at tonight’s State of the Union address the president would move beyond the current border-security wrangling and offer a grand, new vision for moving forward on immigration, involving something Trump has not said before.
That could just be marketing hype, but there's reason to be worried. That’s because the formulation of this new — dare I say "comprehensive" — thrust on immigration is apparently not being overseen by Stephen Miller, but by Jared Kushner. This has raised alarm bells because of Kushner’s Manhattan millionaire liberal instincts, but I’m not sure that that’s the main problem.
Rather, I fear that the combination of Kushner's unfamiliarity with the past 30 years of immigration politics, combined with overconfidence in his powers stemming from his success in brokering criminal-justice reform, will lead the White House astray.