Trump open to ‘Dreamers’ relief

FUNDING: PROGRAMME TO PROTECT ILLEGAL CHILD REFUGEES NOT PART OF WALL PLANS

President not insisting on money to push through legislation.

Washington

US President Donald Trump will not necessarily insist on including funding for a border wall with Mexico in legislation to address protections for children brought to the United States illegally.

White House legislative director Marc Short said the administration will lay out its priorities for a fix for the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (Daca) programme in the next couple of weeks.

While Trump remains committed to his campaign promise to build the border wall, “whether or not that is specifically part of a Daca package or a different legislative package, I am not going to prejudge here today”, Short said.

“I don’t want to bind ourselves into a construct that makes reaching a conclusion on Daca impossible,” he said.

Short’s comments were the latest signal that the Republican president wants to see if he can engage Democrats as well as Republicans in trying to enact his agenda.

Democrats welcomed Short’s comments, saying they cleared away a major stumbling to legislation to help Daca recipients, known as Dreamers.

Democrats have insisted they will not allow border funding to be part of any legislation and would likely have the votes in the Senate to block a provision to which they objected.

“We cannot make a 3 540km wall a condition for passing the Dream Act,” said Senator Dick Durbin, a senior Democrat who has been working for the past 16 years to legislate protections for the Dreamers.

“Democrats are willing to work with the White House and congressional Republicans on other border security measures as part of the legislation,” Durbin added.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, which seeks to limit legal and illegal immigration, criticised the potential shift on Daca. Krikorian said the ad- ministration seemed to be looking for an “escape hatch” on the controversial Daca programme. “It does suggest how much Trump wants this issue to go away,” he said. – Reuters