There he goes again. There’s overwhelming consensus among the American people to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients—a new CNN poll has 83 percent of voters in favor of letting DACA youth stay in the U.S.—and enough bipartisan votes in the Congress to pass the DREAM Act before legislators go home for the holidays, but, like clockwork, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas is back to doing what he does best, which is to try to derail the whole fucking process:
No, no, no. That’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. As immigration reporter Elise Foley tweeted, “Trump rescinded the program, so no new applications, people are already expiring, etc. It can’t be ‘extended,’ and recreating it would mean doing something he said is unconstitutional.” Already, 12,000 DACA recipients have fallen out of status, and every day that Congress delays taking up the DREAM Act, 122 more DACA recipients lose their work permits and protection from deportation.
There’s a solution, and adding the DREAM Act to the year-end spending package is the best hope right now for Dreamers. But as Mario Carrillo, Texas director of immigrant rights group America’s Voice writes, Cornyn “has been a constant obstacle to progress. While he has spoken at length of the benefits of immigrants in America and talked a big game about the need for sensible immigration reform, Cornyn has a long history of not backing up his talk and sabotaging our country’s chance at protecting Dreamers and their families.”
Now that the DREAM Act could be within reach, Cornyn’s back to his old tricks.
This is shit that Cornyn has been pulling for years. America’s Voice earlier this year:
We know the main character, and we know the plot. Call it the “Cornyn Con.” Here’s how it goes: Cornyn pretends he wants to help immigrants and get immigration reform enacted; he convinces some of his fellow Republicans he’s earnest and acting in good faith; they encourage him to try to make common cause with Democrats; he makes sure he demands just enough to appear reasonable to Republicans who want to get to yes, while ensuring Democrats can never agree to his bottom line; he then proclaims that Democrats are demanding too much and tries to take as many Republicans with him as possible in an effort to blow up any prospect of a bipartisan breakthrough.
How do we know how the plot unfolds? Cornyn executed the Cornyn Con when immigration reform had a chance to pass the Senate in 2006, 2007, and 2013. He failed to thwart Senate approval of immigration reform in 2006 and 2013; he helped to defeat it in 2007. Whatever the outcome, it’s always the same play.
Will it work this time?
No, it won’t.
The “Cornyn con,” indeed. The group’s leader, Frank Sharry, called it weeks ago: “Let’s cut through the fog machine, and call it as we see it … John Cornyn is out to derail the Dream Act.” To Cornyn, it’s all political gamesmanship. But Texas is home to the second-largest population of DACA recipients in the nation, and by continuing his snake-tongued doublespeak, he’s saying he has no regard for the lives of over 100,000 young people. After all, this is the same man who said nothing when 10-year-old special needs child Rosamaria Hernandez was detained by Border Patrol. Carrillo:
Can you imagine having the power to improve the lives of 120,000 of your constituents and their families and cynically playing politics instead? That’s what we’re facing with Cornyn.
The lives of more than 800,000 young immigrants nationwide are at stake. Hundreds of DACA recipients are losing their status every day, while tens of thousands more will stand to lose their work permits and protection from deportation if Congress does nothing.
One of those Dreamers is my wife, whose parents made the courageous decision of coming to the U.S. in search for opportunity and a better life when she was only five. My wife has been a DACA recipient since 2012—and because of DACA, she has been able to finish college and start her career.
We were recently married, and we have had to live under the cloud of uncertainty brought on by the ending of DACA and the current failure of Congress to pass a DREAM Act. Even though we’re married, the process to adjust her status is not a given; we still worry about her being detained, especially here in Texas, with the added fear that the discriminatory SB4 law has brought to our state.
Now, we’re having to make plans for a worst-case scenario. We have to discuss what we’ll do if she is deported. These are conversations Dreamers, who like my wife only know the U.S. as home, are having across the country.
“It’s time for him to step aside and allow those in Congress truly interested in solving this issue to lead,” Carrillo writes. “The urgency to pass a DREAM Act before the end of the year is imperative.” So don’t listen to Cornyn’s claims that this can be kicked to next year, that there’s no Congressional support for the DREAM Act, or that there’s no hurry to address this now. The lives of hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients are at stake. Democrats need to hold the line, and the dozens of Republicans who have called on Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan to act need to step up to the plate and demand a vote now.
