Encouraging signs from White House on DACA effort

As disappointing as President Donald Trump’s decision to end the DACA program has been, there is some comfort to be taken in the amount of energy that has swelled up in Congress and from the president himself to save it.

Heartening in Tuesday’s news is that the White House is signaling a willingness to decouple funding for Trump’s ridiculous border wall scheme from a bill that would replace the Obama-era marching orders.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program currently protects about 800,000 teenagers and young adults brought to the country illegally when they were children. In exchange for coming out of the shadows, these law-abiding up-and-comers are allowed to get jobs, go to college and contribute to society. They showed their willingness to do right by the U.S. government, and now they’ve got to trust that the government will return the favor — and by Trump’s six-month deadline.

On Tuesday, the White House director of legislative affairs, Marc Short, said that border wall funding didn’t have to be part of that effort.

“Whether or not (border wall funding) is part of a DACA equation or whether or not that’s another legislative vehicle — I don’t want to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on DACA impossible,” Short said.

Yes, Short stressed that border security remained a top priority, and Trump continues to pursue the wall, but the administration’s willingness to concede this point is promising.

Also, top Congressional Democrats said Tuesday they see cause for hope. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Trump told her in private that he would sign the Dream Act, should Congress pass it.

We again call for a swift resolution of this unneeded fiasco. The DACA program has been working. Now, through no fault of their own, its applicants face most uncertain futures. The dynamic also creates headaches and instability for employers, school administrators and all manner of other business and social entities that interact with the population.

Many U.S. senators are supporting the DREAM Act, which continues protections for DACA recipients and creates a pathway to citizenship.

Congressman Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican, is trying to force an immediate three-year DACA extension, and more recently for supporting the more robust DREAM Act. Because he’s stepped back from a procedural move to rush through the extension in support of the DREAM Act, he’s taken heat from activists led by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee looking to unseat him next year. That may be good politics on the DCCC’s part, but it misses the point that Coffman, once a hardliner, has come this far. He’s promised to revive the quick-fix strategy should the better bill mire in gridlock.

That old argument about border security first misses a key point with the DACA population: they had no choice in coming here and are proving with their actions their desire to become good Americans. Leaving them to suffer this way is unconscionable.

Yes, Congress should shore up border security. Better yet, lawmakers should finally act on significant reform that prevents continued abuse and allows those already here a reasonable chance to gain legal status. Waiting for one of these pieces to do the other remains a poor and cruel strategy.

— The Denver Post, Digital First Media