If Democrats have their way, DACA’s replacement will look a lot like what Roybal-Allard proposed in 2001. Democratic leaders emerged from a meeting with Trump on Wednesday night saying Roybal-Allard’s bill, which includes a path to citizenship for some immigrants in the country illegally, must be part of Congress’ plan to protect DACA recipients.
Roybal-Allard said she started working on the legislation after a late-1990s conversation with a worker in her office who was worried about a college friend living in the country illegally.
“She was telling me about her friend who had graduated from college and could not get a job, and that she was always living in fear of being deported,” Roybal-Allard said.
Roybal-Allard teamed up with now-former Democratic Los Angeles Rep. Howard Berman and now-former Utah Republican Rep. Chris Cannon. They proposed a bill that would have given permanent legal status to some young immigrants and removed a ban on nonresidents using student aid. It died in committee without a hearing. The first Los Angeles Times article on the initiative focused on how the bill would make it easier for students in the country illegally to pay for college.
It was the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who changed its drab title, the Student Adjustment Act, to the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or the Dream Act. The title became a rallying cry for people brought to the country illegally as children, and they began calling themselves “Dreamers.”
Rep. Jeff Denham of Turlock, one of four Republican co-sponsors of Roybal-Allard’s bill, said he’s trying to get bipartisan discussions started in order to make a deal by October. He’s co-sponsored some of the other bills as well, and isn’t set on a particular plan.
“It’s important to send the right message that we’re looking for a path forward and that Republicans and Democrats should work together,” he said.
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