The Washington Post is almost completely right when it says, “Congress, why wait on SCOTUS to act on the Dreamers? Just do the right thing” and pass permanent protections for undocumented youth living in limbo due to the Trump administration’s unlawful and cruel rescission of a vital immigration program. Almost completely right, because this call should really be directed at one person alone: Mitch McConnell.
It’s been five months since the Democratic House passed legislation that would put immigrants who have seen their protections under threat by the administration onto a path to citizenship. Under the Dream and Promise Act, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients would be among the estimated 2.5 million people who could finally live their lives in some peace. But months later, the bill is among robust, historic pieces of legislation passed by the House but ignored by McConnell—and for no reason other than Mitch being Mitch.
There’s the two-faced part of things. "The Dreamers have a sympathetic case,” he said in June, claiming that there “are circumstances under which I and others would be happy to support” protections for DACA recipients. But Mitch wasn’t among the 14 Republicans included in the overwhelming majority of senators who voted in favor of comprehensive immigration legislation in 2013, passing historic legislation by a 68-32 majority to legalize millions of families.
Mitch probably knows that legislation in favor of DACA recipients could be just as popular, maybe even more: Donald Trump’s 2017 decision to kill the program was one of the rarer moments when a significant number of Republicans pushed back against the administration, and some polls have nearly 90% of Americans favoring permanent protections for young immigrants. Dreamers have “a sympathetic case” not because Mitch says so, but because they’ve worked for years to tell their stories of perseverance and resilience and win it.
But McConnell is also perfectly happy being able to obstruct Democrats on anything and be an accomplice in Trump’s mass deportation vision in one fell swoop, the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, their quarter of a million U.S. citizen kids, and millions of American voters who got out in 2018 be damned. They—and all of us—deserve better, and remember that whenever there’s discussion about “congressional gridlock,” it really just comes down to one man.
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