Hoping to fend off a legal challenge to a program that has spared almost 800,000 young immigrants from deportation, two veteran senators made a long-shot appeal to President Donald Trump on Thursday to support legislation that would put those immigrants and thousands of others on a path to US citizenship.
Some advocates also are anxious the administration may end a program created to give temporary status to immigrant students who were brought illegally to the United States as children.
"I think [Secretary of Homeland Security] John Kelly is the guy we should go to and say 'come up with a border security plan that you believe will protect our nation from illegal crossings and also do something about the 40 percent of illegal immigrants who've overstayed their visa", said Graham.
Senators Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, are co-sponsoring the Dream Act of 2017, which would ensure permanent resident status to about a million young people - known as "dreamers" - who were brought to the USA under age 17 and have lived in the country for at least four years.
Graham, who won re-election in 2014, also told SC residents who oppose the DREAM Act not to vote for him.
The 2017 Dream Act, likes its predecessors, focuses on those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children.
Rounds holds out hope for bipartisan health care reform
The revised legislation and the CBO score reflect new funding that's been added to the bill but not a proposed amendment from Sen. But that legislation, the CBO said Thursday, would result in fewer Americans having access to health care.
The bill, if it were to pass, would be a lifeline for the young people who already have registered for the Obama-era program Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Dreamers would be required to graduate from high school or obtain their GED and either pursue a higher education, work for three years or serve in the military. "We do not pull the rug out from under them".
"To President Trump, you're going to have to make a decision", Graham said during the press conference. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Trump indicated some reason for hope last week, telling reporters on Air Force One that ending DACA is "a decision that's very, very hard to make". The attorneys general gave the Trump administration until September 5 to decide. Their proposal, which mirrors previous legislation that failed to pass Congress multiple times, would grant legal status and a path to citizenship to undocumented immigrants if they were longtime residents of the US.
A one-page version of the DREAM Act is available here; the section-by-section version here. What I'd like to do is a comprehensive immigration plan. The current Congress is the 115th Congress. Durbin, the founder of the DREAMer movement, introduced his first DREAM Act in 2001, after learning of the plight of an undocumented Chicago teenager. With Obama out of the White House, many are afraid of being deported. If Trump assured the public the border was secure, Graham said, Republicans would believe him and be more willing to move forward.
Graham acknowledged the president's candidacy was rooted in a hardline approach to immigration but cast the debate as an existential question for the party that now controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. "I could put alligators on the border and I'm not getting there", Graham said, adding that the Gang of Eight "literally militarized the border, but I don't have the power he does to tell the Republican base that we have achieved border security". "It's incredibly important", Torey said. A White House official told McClatchy News on Wednesday that Trump wouldn't sign the bipartisan bill despite once saying he had a "big heart" for the DREAMer population.
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