A DREAM Act do-over?

Let’s review DREAM Act history, shall we?

(And, by the way, I reject the terminology that calls these teens and young adults “Dreamers” because it’s so loaded and propagandistic.  The journalists tend to say, “they’re called Dreamers because of the bill that would have given them legal residency.”  But the bill itself was given that name, one of those appalling acronyms invented by creating goofy bill titles that had the sole purpose of creating an acronym, in order to call these individuals “Dreamers,” not the reverse.  Why don’t we call them Dacans, instead?)

Back in 2009 – 2010, Democrats had a supermajority.

They had a DREAM Act, providing residency for individuals brought to the U.S. as minors.

They could have passed it.

But they lost their chance.

The act was introduced in 2009, but didn’t come up for a vote until December 2010, in the lame-duck session before Democrats in the House handed over control to the GOP, when it was unable to move past a filibuster in the Senate, despite Democrats and allied Republicans having a 61 vote majority, because Democrats Max Baucus, Kay Hagen, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, and Jon Tester voting against it.

I had remembered the Democrats being unable to pass it because too many of them demanded the whole enchilada, but I can’t find any indicator of that; perhaps this demand what what stalled the vote on the bill until the very last minute, perhaps they could have gotten those remaining votes if they’d offered more concessions but were unwilling to.  I can’t find any details any longer on the negotiating process.

In 2011, Obama demanded that Congress pass such a bill, then, in 2012, claiming justification by the fact that Congress was unwilling to do what he believed was their obligation, he declared the “DREAM Act” into existence, in the form of the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) executive order.

And in 2017, “DREAM Act” supporters are acting as if it had passed, that is, as if what Obama did had at least the moral force of legislation, rather than being a temporary measure with no basis for continuation once the Obama administration left office.

In the meantime, Trump is, according to Politico, poised to end DACA with a 6 month grace period.  And, in the meantime, Paul Ryan and other enforcement-indifferent Republicans are announcing that Trump should wait, to give them time for a “legislative fix.”

Now, as it happens, there are even immigration hardliners who are willing to accept a legislative DACA program, so long as it is part of a larger bill.  Mark Krikorian proposes that DACA be rolled up into a bill with the RAISE Act (reduces immigration, preferences skilled workers, and eliminates green card eligibility for non-immediate family, such as adult siblings), the Davis-Oliver Act (strengthens enforcement), and mandatory E-Verify.

But, CNN reports, there are updated “DREAM Act” bills, such as one introduced by Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and Chuck Shumer, which is more generous than the existing DACA, and contains no compromise enforcement provisions. (A summary is available on Durbin’s website; note that it seems to have dispensed with the need for “Dream” to be an acronym for anything; it’s just the “Dream Act.”) According to the National Immigration Law Center, a pro-amnesty group, and the bill summary, the bill is more generous than DACA or the original DREAM Act, in that it does not appear to have any date cut-off (that is, there is no requirement to have been brought into the U.S. before a given date; as far as I can see, future arrivals will also be eligible, so that it’s an ongoing promise to give legal residency to anyone arriving as a minor — maybe the actual legislation restricts eligibility to those present as of the law’s enactment?), it requires only 4 years of residency, individuals who arrived even at age 17 are eligible, they need only be in high school or a GED program to be initially eligible, and must have minimally worked 3 years afterwards, or be exempt due to the need to care for a child (that is, girls who get pregnant before ever having worked, need not ever work to receive these benefits).

So are there enough Republicans willing to pass an unconditional “DREAM Act” for the Durbin plan to pass?  And if so, will Trump sign it into law?

In a way, this seems like the 2017 equivalent to the sequester.  Trump is, if these reports are correct, setting a deadline.  In the same way as the sequester was supposed to produce unpleasant enough consequences to force Congress to produce a budget deal, the elimination of DACA should function as a deadline by which Congress must work out a legislative solution.

Is Trump, in doing so, doing something gravely immoral, hideously evil, as countless people on my twitter and facebook feeds are proclaiming?  All he’s doing is saying, “the fate of these individuals is something that must be decided by the legislature,” and giving them a deadline.

So what are the possible outcomes?  Here are potential scenarios:

1. Congress fails to act, because it’s just incompetent and, frankly, would rather complain about the president than do anything.  (See:  ACA/Obamacare.)

2. Congress doesn’t act because the majority are perfectly fine with current DACA-recipients losing their work permits and returning to the status quo of false IDs, under-the-table work, and half-hearted indifferent enforcement.

3. Alternately, the majority in Congress are perfectly fine with DACA (or afraid of being called “immoral” if not) so they pass a simple equivalent to the current program.  (Let’s assume the expansiveness of the Durbin bill makes it a nonstarter.)

4. Or, enough in Congress are only willing to vote for legislative DACA if paired with some Democratic concessions on immigration, such as a wider implementation of E-Verify.

5. Or, Democrats refuse to make those concessions, demanding a “clean bill” and calling their opponents inhumane for placing any conditions on its passage — either because they genuinely are convinced it’s simply too monstrous to accept any restrictions, or whether they’re OK with allowing it to fail, then treating its failure as a “win” because it gives them the opportunity to case their opponents as fundamentally evil people.

So what do you think?  My money’s on number three – Congress lining up to say, “well, we had to, because of the high school valedictorians and all.”

Image from wikimedia commons.