US President Donald Trump says he will soon sign new merit-based immigration act

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will soon sign a merit-based immigration act that will also take care of the immigrants brought to the country illegally as children and protected under the DACA programme.

"We are going to be signing an immigration act very soon. It is going to be based on merit, it is going to be very strong," Trump told reporters at a Rose Garden press conference at the White House.

"We are going to work on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) because we want to make people happy and I will tell you even conservative Republicans want to see something happen with DACA," he said.

Trump said the Democrats had their chance for three years to do something with DACA and they always turned it down.

"They always turned it down. They used it as politics. I am using it to get something done, but we will be signing a very powerful immigration act. It will be great, it will be merit-based. The country has tried to get it for 25 or 30 years," he said in response to a question.

"It will be strong on the border, but you will come in legally and you will be able to come in legally and very importantly, we will be taking care of people from DACA in a very Republican way," the president said.

He said the Democrats had their chance and they blew it. "But we are going to take care of DACA because I am going to be doing in the not-too-distant future, pretty soon I am going to be signing a new immigration action, very, very big merit-based immigration action based on the DACA decision," he said.