Kick the Dreamer Can
It’s looking like the Dreamers’ best hope for now is that Congress can at least manage to kick the can on yet another front and grant them temporary protection. The chances for any permanent action are fading fast.
The Dreamers are 800,000 or so young adults brought into the United States illegally as children. They’ve grown up here, and many don’t even know the country where they hold legal citizenship. Many have built admirable lives, even serving in the US military.
President Barack Obama, after years of saying he lacked the power to do so, gave them temporary relief with an executive order setting up the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals system, which let them register and gain quasi-legal status.
But he was right the first time: The order was blatantly unconstitutional. So President Trump announced last year that he’d end the program in six months — the deadline is March 5 — because the courts were about to strike DACA down entirely.
Back then, Trump called on Congress to come up with some way to let the Dreamers live legal, productive lives here. But the quest for compro- mise is looking futile. Lawmakers are now looking to pass the fix as part of the next federal-funding bill, which must become law by Jan. 19 to avoid a government shutdown.
Yet Democrats are insisting that the new law give Dreamers a permanent right to stay, with an easy path to US citizenship.
Trump and many Republicans won’t grant that unless the Dems back other immigration-related fixes: money for The Wall, other border-enforcement increases and new restrictions on legal immigration.
It’s a deadlock, since no bill has a majority without support from parts of both parties. “We have been gridlocked on this issue for years,” notes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “We do not want to just spin our wheels and have nothing to show for it.”
The least Democrats and Republicans can do is unite to pass some measure that gives Dreamers the right to stay (and work or study) for another year or two, in hopes that lawmakers can work out some long-term compromise down the road. Sadly, that seems to be the most that Congress is capable of doing.