Congress should protect Dreamers, but now is not the time

The federal government’s funding will run out on Friday at midnight, unless Congress passes a shortterm spending package between now and then.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump acknowledged that a shutdown “could happen,” and pre-emptively singled out a culprit, in case it does. “The Democrats are really looking at something that is very dangerous for our country,” Trump said. He elaborated: “They want to have illegal immigrants pouring into our country.” This was, apparently, a reference to the Democrats’ hopes that any such continuing resolution include protections for the roughly 800,000 unauthorized immigrants affected by his administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program established by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in 2012.

Some Democrats have demanded that such protections be included in any short-term spending package congressional leaders come up with, and have said that they will refuse to vote for one that does not.

On Monday, John Cornyn, our senior senator, blasted such demands as “a hysterical and cynical ploy,” during a speech on the Senate floor.

Cornyn is among the leading Republicans who have joined Democrats in calling for a longterm solution for the “Dreamers,” but has argued that it should be pursued separately from any short-term spending fix — and that at this point, it will have to be.

“How can you claim to care about the 800,000 undocumented immigrants that this program protects through work permits and deportation relief but then turn your back on the 322 million people who need to know that their government is still able to function?” Cornyn asked.

The question is not merely academic. Republicans control both chambers of Congress, but will need some votes from their Democratic colleagues to pass a

continuing resolution — even if all the Republicans are committed to doing so, which they are not.

According to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, nearly two-thirds of voters — including 61 percent of Republicans — want Congress to do whatever it takes to avoid a shutdown.

Still, many are willing to take such a risk over various priorities, including reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which expired in September, or authorizing disaster aid to the states and territories that sustained severe damage during this summer’s storms. What a mess, huh? Unlike Cornyn, I harbor no particular delusions about whether our federal government is still able to function. But I do agree with him on the issue at hand.

Congress should pass a DREAM Act, as soon as it can. And their progress on tax reform, over the course of the past two weeks, suggests that they do have the capacity to act lickety-split.

But it’s unrealistic to expect Congress to pass a DREAM Act by Friday, given that they also have to try to try to avoid a government shutdown, and figure out what to do about Al Franken. And it would be reasonable to ask Democratic leaders, frankly, why they haven’t prioritized this issue yet.

Dreamers are, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from young Americans, except that they happen to be unauthorized immigrants.

Texans tacitly recognized that back in 2001, with the passage of a law making such immigrants eligible for in-state tuition at the state’s public colleges and universities, commonly referred to as the “Texas Dream Act.”

And advocates have been calling on Congress to pass legislation providing Dreamers with a pathway to citizenship, or at least legal status, for more than a decade.

In theory, the idea of doing so has always had bipartisan support, and rightly so. In practice, it has always become ensnared by politics.

In June 2012, Janet Napolitano, then the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, issued a memorandum setting out the administration’s policies for enforcing the nation’s immigration laws against young people who came to the United States when they were under the age of 16, provided they had subsequently maintained a clean criminal record and had met certain criteria, such as graduating from high school or serving in the military.

Such immigrants had not actually been targeted for enforcement prior to this, for the simple reason that they were not actually a threat to public safety, nor were they economic migrants competing with native-born workers in certain industries. And Napolitano’s memo was, at first glance, merely articulating a common-sense consensus on the subject.

“Additional measures are necessary to ensure that our enforcement resources are not expended on these low-priority cases but are instead appropriately focused on people who meet our enforcement priorities,” she wrote.

The memo also formalized that consensus, however, by stipulating that immigrants who qualified for relief from immigration enforcement, under the criteria laid out, should also be eligible to apply for work permits, which would be renewable every two years.

Perhaps 3 million people were eligible for relief, according to these terms, and some 800,000 people have been authorized to work in the United States since then.

An overwhelming majority of Americans would agree that — in addition to having done nothing wrong — these young people are an asset to the country and to the communities in which they live. In September, a survey from the Washington Post-ABC found that 86 percent of Americans believe they should be allowed to remain in the country.

The president, in theory, is among them.

“We are going to deal with DACA with heart,” he said in February, shortly after being sworn in.

But on Sept. 5, the Trump administration announced that it was rescinding the policy, and would no longer accept new applications for work authorizations, although it would accept renewals for six months, until March 5.

This was, according to Trump, not inconsistent with his previous comments. Many advocates would disagree with him. But the fact is that DACA is a program, not a law. And Trump did give Congress six months to create a durable version.

There is, unfortunately, plenty of reason to doubt that Congress will do the right thing.