Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

President Donald J. Trump will talk about his plan for a merit-based immigration at the White House Rose Garden at 2:30 on Thursday.

Wednesday, CBS Evening News reported President Trump will “propose sweeping changes to the legal immigration system. According to CBS News the plan would shift to a merit-based approach. More green cards would go to immigrants with education and skills that would give them a better chance to contribute to the economy. Family ties would carry less weight.”

The Associated Press reports that Trump’s plan, “focuses on beefing up border security and rethinking the green card system so that it would favor people with high-level skills, degrees and job offers instead of relatives of those already in the country.” The Associated Press also reported that President Trump’s “shift to a merit-based system marks a dramatic departure from the nation’s largely family-based approach, which gives roughly 66% of green cards to those with family ties and only 12% based on skills.”

According to the Washington Examiner  under the President’s plan, “the share of legal immigrants permitted entry based on job skills would rise from 12% to 57%. Family bonds as a justification for legal entry would fall from 66% to 33%. Asylum and diversity admissions would fall from 22% to 10%.”

And USA Today tells us the President Trump’s plan “deals only with legal immigration, not the 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. or the roughly 3.6 million ‘Dreamers’ who were illegally brought into the country as minors.” It “also does not address an asylum system the Trump administration says is broken.”

Democrats were quick to criticize President Trump’s proposal.  The Wall Street Journal reports Senate Minority Leader Schumer told reporters, “I think there are folks in the White House who consider the fact that this proposal doesn’t increase immigration to be some kind of concession. They’re mistaken.” Politico reports Kushner spent little time selling the plan to Democrats:

“They haven’t even talked to Democrats,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday.

Reuters reports that while chances of Trump’s plan “being approved by Congress seem distant, the plan will give Republicans an outline they can say they favor as Trump and lawmakers look toward” the 2020 elections.