Campaign Action
Three former secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security—Jeh Johnson and Janet Napolitano, who served under President Barack Obama, and Michael Chertoff, who served under President George W. Bush—are warning congressional leaders that the window for action to protect the status of undocumented Americans who were brought to the U.S. as children is closing. Congress must pass the Dream Act, they say, in the next few weeks to give the government, the Dreamers, and their employers time to act before the program's scheduled expiration in March—the deadline popular vote loser Donald Trump capriciously set.
"We write not only in strong support of this legislation, but to stress that it should be enacted speedily, in order to meet the significant administrative requirements of implementation, as well as the need to provide certainty for employers and these young people," the letter said. "For these reasons, the realistic deadline for successfully establishing a Dreamers program in time to prevent large-scale loss of work authorization and deportation protection is only weeks away, in the middle of January." […]
"Legislation is the only permanent way to prevent these Dreamers from losing work authorization and becoming subject to immediate deportation," the letter said. "Establishing a program to effectively adjudicate a new immigration application system must be done responsibly."
There needs to be proper time to train people to ensure that applications are properly reviewed, they wrote, saying that when DACA was established, it took nearly three months before the first applications were approved. […]
It was up to Congress to determine whether to pass legislation that would extend those protections that would “allow them to continue contributing to the only nation they have known,” the former secretaries said.
"Not only is there no reason to delay, but establishing this new program in 45 days would be an incredible accomplishment done in record time," the letter continued.
That last bit might just be their attempt to get Trump on board—the superlatives of "an incredible accomplishment done in record time" might just be enough to overcome his racism and do something big. But probably not.
What this letter should do is stiffen the spines of congressional Democrats to make passing the Dream Act their line in the sand for the January 19 government shutdown deadline. They blinked once already, refusing to hold the line in December. They don't have that luxury anymore. Time is running out.