As Dreamer-related negotiations take center stage in Washington, DC, the urgency for legislative action is acute.
Many Republicans, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, are trying to advance the false notion that Congress has until March to act for Dreamers. This ignores the fact that nearly 15,000 DACA recipients have already lost their DACA status and an estimated 122 DACA recipients lose their status every day. The examples of young people like Osman Enriquez and Brittany Aguilera drive the point home.
Others are under the false impression that President Trump could somehow resurrect DACA protections for hundreds of thousands of people with the snap of his fingers. For example,today’s Politico Playbook includes the assertion that Trump “has the ability to extend the existing deadline past March.” That would require Trump to take executive action to restart a DACA program that he has already ended and one that both Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly have called unconstitutional.
A new letter from a bipartisan trio of former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretaries makes clear that mid-January is the real deadline. As the New York Times recaps, the letter from former DHS Secretaries Michael Chertoff (Bush), Janet Napolitano (Obama), and Jeh Johnson (Obama) states in part:
We write not only in strong support of this legislation but to stress it should be enacted speedily, in order to meet the significant administrative requirements of implementation, as well as the need to provide certainty for employers and these young people. For these reasons, the realistic deadline for successfully establishing a Dreamers program in time to prevent large scale loss of work authorization and deportation protection is only weeks away, in the middle of January.
According to Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
Dreamers have had their lives upended by Trump’s decision last September to terminate DACA. Jobs are being lost, futures are being cut short, universities are losing good students, and companies are losing valued employees. Now is the time for elected officials to keep their word, stand with the overwhelming majority of Americans, and deliver a solution. In fact, the only place where this issue seems to be the least bit controversial is among some Republicans in Washington, D.C., who are trying to slow-walk the process and scuttle a deal by loading up a legislative fix with unpopular and unrelated poison pill provisions. It’s time for politicians to stop playing games with the lives of these young Americans and to enact the Dream Act in January.
