Summary: President Trump indicated that if Democrats work with him to fund his border wall that he would work with them on helping Dreamers.
In a surprising move, President Donald Trump is not only working with Democrats but he is also working to protect participants of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. However, the results of his bipartisanship are up in the air, according to CNN.
On Wednesday, Trump met with Democratic leaders over dinner to talk about finding a potential pathway to citizenship for DACA participants, also known as Dreamers. Additionally, he was there to discuss funding a wall along the US-Mexico border, an issue that he has been adamant about since his campaign. The dinner was first disclosed by Democratic leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, and on Thursday, Trump confirmed the news.
According to CNN, conservatives reacted with outrage and wanted the President’s Republican allies in Congress to take action to stop the president from making any liberal concessions. Trump had already made one pact with Pelosi and Schumer this month regarding government spending.
Trump said on Thursday morning that House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were “on board” with his plans regarding what to do with DACA participants. DACA allowed children who were brought into this country illegally by their parents to stay in the US, and it protected almost 800,000 individuals from deportation. The majority of them were employed or in school. None had criminal records.
After the initial announcement that DACA would end, Ryan and other conservatives such as Senator John McCain expressed that they did not think that was the right move. However, Ryan has made it clear that he is not siding with the liberals. Addressing reporters about Trump’s dinner, Ryan said the meeting was “a discussion, not an agreement or a negotiation.”
Congress has six months to pass legislation to address what will happen to the Dreamers now that DACA will end. It is unclear what the Democrats are working on, but Trump indicated that their cooperation with funding the wall would be a part of them getting what they want with the Dreamer deal.
Trump has said that he wants the Dreamers to stay but he is not looking at citizenship or amnesty as options. In a speech addressing Hurricane Irma, he said, “If we don’t have the wall, we are doing nothing.”
Years ago, Republicans and Democrats proposed an immigration bill called the DREAM Act, and although it was never passed, it is rumored that the DREAM Act may be a solution to the ending DACA program, according to CNN.
Republicans were noticeably absent from Wednesday’s dinner, but that day Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy had their own meeting with Democrats to discuss immigration.
“It’s the beginning of a listening that the President asked us to do,” McCarthy said. “We’ve got a broken immigration system we’ve got to fix. It was the beginning of a discussion where we were listening to concerns.”
Source: CNN
