President Trump is looking a lot more flexible — and a lot less ideological — than Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer when it comes to a deal on the Dreamers. It’s almost like Chuck’s hit a wall.
Schumer this week pulled his offer of billions for border security, including Trump’s Wall, in exchange for legislation protecting young folks brought here illegally as children.
That had been part of his bid to avoid a government shutdown, though he wound up taking the GOP’s offer, with nothing on immigration (but with funding for children’s health insurance, another top liberal priority).
This supposed sellout infuriated the Democratic base. Pro-Dreamer protesters marched to his house, chanting, “If Chuck won’t let us dream, we won’t let him sleep.” That got him to take his deal off the table.
Then Team Trump put out its own proposal: a law that lets up to 1.8 million Dreamers work, study and live legally (that’s more than twice as many as President Barack Obama claimed to protect) and offers a path to citizenship — in exchange for more border funding, an end to “diversity lottery visas” and restrictions on “chain migration.”
The anti-immigration right sees this as a Trump sellout, since it means “amnesty” for the Dreamers. And Schumer also blasted it, insisting Friday, “This plan flies in the face of what most Americans believe” because it includes “the wish list that anti-immigration hardliners have advocated for years.”
In fact, every element of Trump’s package polls well. (“The Wall” is radioactive, but beefing up the border plays fine.) Most Americans want both mercy for the Dreamers and a less crazy immigration system.
If the Resistance won’t let Chuck make a fair counter-offer, how about allowing a vote on Trump’s plan, with all sides declaring it a matter of individual conscience?
If Democrats aren’t willing to bend that much to give the Dreamers a chance, then they’re not really fighting for them at all.