A big move on ‘dreamers’ will test Democrats’ reading of the moment

As has been widely observed, Democrats have learned some hard lessons from the Barack Obama presidency. Among them: It’s a fool’s errand to spend too much time chasing Republican support, because GOP promises of compromise mysteriously tend not to materialize, no matter what Democrats concede along the way.
The immigration issue poses particularly difficult challenges in this regard. And an early test of what Democrats plan to do about this will present itself any day now.
Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) are set to introduce a new version of the Dream Act as early as this week. Though plans might change, this bill would provide a path to legalization for around 2 million “dreamers,” i.e., immigrants who were brought here illegally as children.
The bill, like another version introduced in 2019, would create a conditional permanent resident status for these immigrants, allowing them to work and protecting them from deportation. If they meet certain conditions — maintain continued U.S. residency; graduate from college or serve in the military; learn English — they can transition to lawful permanent resident status.
This move by Democrats reflects a big shift in thinking. The new view is grounded in an assessment of why efforts to seek large, comprehensive reforms — legalizing many millions of undocumented immigrants, overhauling how work visas are doled out and much more — have steadily failed.
The basic premise of those efforts was that if Republicans were promised huge amounts of enforcement money, it would give them the cover they needed with their base to support comprehensive reform.
Comprehensive reform was also coveted by the business community. So the calculation was that if the GOP’s business supporters were on board, Republican lawmakers could use that as cover, too.
But as Democrats learned, on this issue, Republicans have turned out to be largely in thrall to the anti-immigrant and nativist components of their base.
Another problem with going big while also hunting for GOP support, as immigration advocate Frank Sharry told CNN’s Ronald Brownstein, is that it has produced endless legislative “sausage making.” This is easy for bad-faith voices on the right to demagogue, driving Republicans away.
So a quick hit on the Dream Act is emerging as an answer to this. The idea is that legalizing the dreamers would be both very popular and very easy for the public to understand.
After all, the moral plight of the dreamers is crystal clear. They were brought here through no fault of their own. They are thoroughly American, having lived much of their lives here. They are being held back from pursuing life paths in education and employment in ways that are both counterproductive and morally arbitrary. And the remedy is a no-brainer.
Is there any chance 10 Republican senators (the number needed to overcome a filibuster) might support this? It might seem highly unlikely. But a handful of GOP senators already support legalizing the dreamers, including Graham, John Cornyn (Tex.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and James Lankford (Okla.).
Graham, Cornyn and Tillis are on the Judiciary Committee, which is where the bill will reportedly be introduced and shepherded by Durbin, the committee’s chairman. So this will provide an early test of whether Republicans are willing to act on their own stated intentions. If this can get to the floor, maybe we can have a real debate.
You might think that the post-Trump GOP might be even less receptive to action on immigration than in the past. On the other hand, some Republicans are looking for ways to separate the party from former president Donald Trump. Perhaps a few Republicans who will back Trump through impeachment while the spotlight is glaring on them might see this as a relatively easy way to subtly move the party past Trump while the base isn’t looking.
To be clear, I’m not particularly optimistic that this will succeed. But if Democrats can somehow get this done, it might help in another way.
Opponents of President Biden’s agenda are practically salivating at the chance to portray any coming rush of migrants at the border as proof that undoing Trump’s cruel and draconian agenda will bring instant bedlam at the border and political disaster for Biden.
If Democrats can pass a Dream Act — an “amnesty,” as critics will scream — and the sky does not fall, either at the border or politically for Biden and Democrats, that might provide momentum to build on it.
Options could include legalizing more classes of immigrants, ending Trump’s cruelty-as-deterrence policies toward asylum seekers and (as Biden is set to announce Thursday) letting in tens of thousands more refugees than under Trump. Stranger things have happened.

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