Quote:
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump’s inaction on the issue was rooted in sympathy for the Dreamers, coupled with a desire to create a careful plan for addressing their status. The administration, consumed with sweeping directives to increase deportations of other undocumented immigrants, does not have the capacity to manage the issue, he said.
“His thinking is: ‘We don’t have to deal with this right now. I want to hear more. I want to plan how we deal with this,’” Mr. Spicer said. “Let’s not start to create a problem that doesn’t exist right now. We’re not capable of handling it right now — we’ve got to deal with the first million.”
Inside the White House, the president’s advisers are concerned that he has repeatedly referred to Dreamers, many of whom are in their 20s and 30s, in such sympathetic and politically loaded terms. “Our immigration folks are like, ‘Stop calling them kids,’” Mr. Spicer said.
The president is weighing a variety of strategies for dealing with the roughly 840,000 Dreamers, according to senior officials, including Mr. Priebus, and lawmakers of both parties in Congress have been trying to devise legislation to carve out a special status for them. For the time being, Mr. Trump’s administration is still issuing work permits to undocumented people under the program, leaving their protection intact even if their fate is in limbo.
Mr. Durbin has teamed up with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on legislation known as the Bridge Act. The bill would essentially replace Mr. Obama’s executive action with an expanded initiative that would allow at least 740,000 of those who had received reprieves and work permits to keep those benefits for three more years.
It has the support of Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both Republicans. So far, there has been little movement among other Republicans to support the bill, and many, especially members of the House, would accept it only if it were paired with strict border security provisions or were part of a large package that could include Mr. Trump’s plan for a wall along the Mexican border.
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It has to be something more permanent if it's going to be coupled with border security etc.