Prez urged not to abandon ‘Dreamers’

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will announce his decision on Tuesday on whether to rescind the Obama-era policy protecting immigrants who came to the US illegally as children, the White House has said.

“We’re actually going to make that announcement on Tuesday of next week,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Friday of the so-called Dreamer programme.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan urged Trump on Friday not to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, programme, as more Republicans lined up against the move.

DACA protects nearly 800,000 young men and women from deportation and makes those covered, so-called Dreamers, eligible for work permits.

“We love the ‘Dreamers,’” the Republican president, already facing calls from leading business figures and Democrats to preserve the programme, told reporters in the Oval Office, without tipping his hand on the decision. Ryan and Senator Orrin Hatch joined some lawmakers from the party that controls Congress and the White House to speak out against killing DACA, created in 2012 by Democratic former President Barack Obama and long the target of conservative immigration hard-liners.

“I actually don’t think he should do that, and I believe that this is something Congress has to fix,” Ryan said. He said Obama exceeded his authority in creating DACA by executive order, bypassing Congress, but there now are “people who are in limbo.”