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Congress weighs leaving Dreamers in limbo another year

If lawmakers can’t reach a broader deal, they could provide temporary protections for the young undocumented immigrants.

By SEUNG MIN KIM

02/05/2018 05:15 AM EST
A demonstrator is pictured. | Getty Images

Demonstrators, many of them recent immigrants to the United States, protest the government shutdown and the lack of a deal on DACA outside of Federal Plaza on Jan. 22, 2018, in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Congress may just end up punting on its Dreamer dilemma.

As lawmakers grasp for a solution for the young undocumented immigrants, one option is a temporary extension — perhaps one year — of their legal protections paired with a little bit of cash for border security.

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“That may be where we’re headed because, you know, Congress is pretty dysfunctional,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the few to publicly acknowledge the possibility of a temporary fix. “That’d be a real loss. But that’s probably where we’re headed, OK?”

Some senators are already deriding a yearlong patch as “misguided,” a “Plan Z” and a proposal that would keep immigrants “in fear.” But lawmakers have only until March 5 to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program under President Donald Trump’s deadline.

And in a Congress that has routinely struggled to keep the lights on, at least some lawmakers say a temporary fix for Dreamers might be all but inevitable. Lawmakers return to Washington this week with another government shutdown looming after Feb. 8 and a deal on Dreamers still far out of reach — a reality that could make a DACA stopgap increasingly appealing.There’s ample precedent for immigration programs getting extended in fits and starts.

The EB-5 visa program, which grants wealthy foreign investors a shot at green cards if they invest a significant amount of money in domestic enterprises, has been routinely reauthorized in recent short-term funding bills.
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Other, more obscure immigration programs have also been temporarily renewed. The list includes the Conrad 30 waiver for immigrant doctors in rural areas, as well as a visa for religious workers, said Leon Fresco, a veteran immigration attorney at Holland and Knight.

The DACA punt appears inevitable, Fresco said — particularly as Trump continually hints of an extension to the March 5 deadline. Trump would be hamstrung from doing that unilaterally, Fresco argued, because his Department of Justice has said DACA, enacted under President Barack Obama, was done illegally.

“If he wants to do this extension, the only way to do the extension is to ask Congress to do it on his behalf,” said Fresco, a former DOJ official under Obama and immigration aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “I think both sides would call it a day … knowing that this could be revisited later.”

Lawmakers are starting to run out of time, even though the early March deadline may not be firm after a federal court ordered the administration to accept DACA renewals again. While all DACA recipients are allowed to renew their permits, it still takes months to process the applications — meaning beneficiaries whose protections expire in the weeks after March 5 could temporarily be left vulnerable to deportations.

On Friday, Trump sounded downcast on the prospects of an immigration deal and attempted to pin the blame on congressional Democrats — although it was Trump who triggered the dilemma in the first place by announcing last fall that he would end Obama’s directive.

"We wanna make a deal,” Trump said during a tour of a Customs and Border Protection training center. “I think they want to use it for political purposes, for elections. I really am not happy with the way it's going, from the standpoint of the Democrats."
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Apart from Graham, most senators and aides are loath to entertain the prospect that Congress would punt in the ongoing immigration talks.

“I think that that’s misguided,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “I think that’s a lazy way out of fixing a problem that we’re on the brink of being able to fix.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said he’s heard the chatter about a one-year DACA fix, but he stressed that doing so “will not be ideal.”

“To be back here a year from now, doing this again … that would be like Plan Z,” Rubio said. “Everybody, across the board, is prepared to do something, you know, that gets permanency to elements of this issue.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has hosted a growing group of senators trying to hammer out a backup immigration plan, said Dreamers deserve to be assured of a more permanent future than one sketched out in yearlong increments.

“I’m a little concerned that if it’s a very short-term fix that they’re still living in fear of what’s gonna happen, rather than knowing that they can live in this country and work towards becoming a citizen, assuming they have a good record,” Collins said. “So that does not appeal to me because we’ll be back in the same debate a year from now.”

The punting proposal also has other challenges.

Democrats could throw up objections to the idea, considering they’re achieving a mere temporary extension for DACA recipients yet are conceding funding for something they see as permanent, such as a border wall.
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And a bare-bones Dreamers bill would be likely to face resistance in the House, where conservative Republicans are already complaining that even the White House framework — which calls for sharp restrictions to the family-based immigration system — is too generous to young undocumented immigrants.

Lawmakers may soon have no choice, however.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) has discussed how a temporary DACA fix could be accompanied by equally short-term measures. Likewise, a more permanent solution, such as a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, would allow for more expansive changes in border security and legal immigration.

“I’d be disappointed in that outcome,” Cornyn said last week of a one-year punt. “I’m still holding out hope for a bill along the lines of the president’s outline.”