In a not-terribly-surprising development from the newly minted president-elect, Donald Trump has stated that he going to work out a deal with the 740,000 illegal immigrants under DREAM Act that will make them both “happy and proud.” From the POLITICO:
Some 740,000 so-called Dreamers have been given a deportation reprieve and other benefits by President Barack Obama through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Obama enacted by executive action in 2012. But the status of those young immigrants, who do not have formal legal status, has been in limbo because Trump has said he would overturn Obama’s immigration orders.
. . .
“We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” Trump told the magazine. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Clearly, this is an amazing development, as your humble writer here can clearly recall a time where such sentiment was deplored as “amnesty!” by the nativist qua nationalist right.
Of course, I prefer the way I put it back in April 2014:
This is not an issue of Right or Left, it’s an issue of right and wrong, agreed? [murmurs of agreement from audience] … But to have the courage to come down here and do that, and make whats on your hearts and on your minds known, that’s exactly what this world needs now. And that’s exactly, if we’re going to have any sort of solution on immigration policy that is moral, that is just, that honors the sacrifices not just of our family and friends and our forefathers but what America ought to be, you’ve done a small part here today. I can’t thank you enough for coming here today, I really can’t, and I mean that sincerely.
Sounds like DJT is coming back home… then again, Trump has always been friendly to the idea of some sort of solution for DREAMers in that regard — not amnesty, but a legal path to citizenship that involved some degree of restorative justice and restitution.
This naturally will not satisfy the more virulent nativist sections of Trump’s base of support… but who the heck else are they going to support?
George Will used to have a line that said the advantage of being a pessimist is that every once in awhile you will be pleasantly surprised. Color me pleasantly surprised.