Ivanka Trump joined the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Deloitte on stage Monday at the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, where she was asked about immigration and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The first daughter, who has taken on an advisory role to President Donald Trump, was at the summit to speak at a panel called “Working With Washington on the Future of Work.” Moderator Nina Easton asked Ivanka Trump about how Dreamers, the name given to young people eligible for DACA protections, would fit into the future of the workplace as more than 6 million jobs remain vacant.
Of the 800,000 people protected by the DACA program, nearly 700,000 are employed in the U.S. workforce.
“Well, I think this is a very complicated issue that needs a long-term congressional fix,” Trump responded to Easton, an author and Fortune columnist. “I am personally of the opinion, and the president has stated this, that we have to figure out a solution that protects these innocent people, many of whom were brought to this country as children. But there has to be a long-term fix, and it cannot be bandaged over at a presidential level ... that can be rescinded by a subsequent administration.”
The previous speaker, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), had called for comprehensive immigration reform. Trump agreed with her remarks and said a flawed visa system has to be “fundamentally reconsidered.”
Just the night before, the White House told Congress that it wanted to push ahead on a border wall and immigration limits as leverage for the continuation of DACA.
Last month the president told Congress he would give it six months to find a solution to the Obama-era program that gives work permits and deportation protections to children who were brought illegally into the United States by their parents.
“We would expect Congress to include all of these reforms in any package that addresses the possible status of DACA recipients,” a top administration official told reporters Sunday evening on condition of anonymity.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) released a joint statement accusing the president of going back on his word to them.
″The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations,” the statement reads. “If the president was serious about protecting the Dreamers, his staff has not made a good faith effort to do so.”
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, reportedly support extension of the DACA program and have advised the president to embrace the widely supported protections. A group of Dreamers held a candlelight vigil outside the couple’s home in September after the six-month deadline was reported by Politico.