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Young immigrants see DREAM killed by politics

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- How's this for a whodunnit: Who really killed the deal to save Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- President Trump or congressional Democrats?

The question isn't simply, "Who killed DACA?" We know the answer to that. It was Trump who nixed the Obama-era program last September and then called on Congress to provide a permanent legislative solution by March 5.

After lawmakers missed that deadline, the judicial branch came to the rescue. A federal judge declared that the administration could not pull the rug out from under DACA recipients by changing the rules. So, while no new applications are being taken, existing applicants have a certain degree of protection as long as they continue to renew their status.

It's a Band-Aid over a bullet wound. It's also a lost opportunity to offer legal status and eventual citizenship not only to roughly 700,000 DACA recipients but also -- under a generous proposal from the White House in January -- another 1.1 million Dreamers not enrolled in the program.

Yet the question of who derailed, over the last few months, the political negotiation to save DACA is more complicated.

Sadly, when they talk about immigration, neither liberals nor conservatives are proficient in "complicated." That would require honesty about the fact that neither political party cares much about the Dreamers, and both have done a lousy job of dealing with the low-hanging fruit of the immigration debate.

 

After all, if lawmakers won't give legal status to undocumented young people who have lived in the United States their entire lives, speak English fluently, go to college, have jobs and followed the rules to register for DACA, then how will they ever have the bandwidth and backbone to legalize their working-class, less-educated and less-assimilated parents?

However, both parties are fluent in the languages of over-simplification, blame shifting, and self-preservation through avoidance of the topic. That's why most of the chatter coming out of Washington about DACA and Dreamers amounts to feverish attempts by both parties to malign the other side.

Trump is good at this game. Unlike most Republicans, when it comes to immigration, he doesn't wait to be attacked as callous, indifferent or racist. He goes on the offensive.

The president recently tweeted: "DACA is dead because the Democrats didn't care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon ... No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!"

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