No DACA Before the End of the Year, Says Top GOP Senator

In comments to reporters on Monday, the number-two Republican in the Senate said that there would be no amnesty for Dreamers before 2018, throwing water on the hopes of Democrats who had wanted to put DACA amnesty in one of the pre-Christmas negotiation packages. Sen. John Cornyn, the Senate GOP whip, said that lawmakers would take up the subject of the Dreamers’ fate sometime in the first few months of next year.

“The president has given us enough time to deal with this before March and so I think that’s plenty of time and I expect us to meet it,” Cornyn said. “If we can’t, then the president could extend the deadline if he chose to do so. But this is something we’re going to turn to, I’m sure, in January.”

Hopefully, President Trump will NOT decide to extend the deadline, because it’s bad enough that Congress got a deadline in the first place. Trump’s order taking away Obama’s illegal executive amnesty should have been the end of it, once and for all. No one asked for this. No one voted for this to be a thing. If Congress thinks it’s ready to tackle comprehensive immigration reform once again, then let them start from scratch and put something acceptable to the president on his desk. But if it’s a mishmash of weak security reforms and amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants, then they can expect it to share the fate of their last “Gang of Eight” bill that went over so well with conservative voters.

Instead, we get this in-between nonsense where Democrats are trying to trade a few million dollars in border security funds for DACA amnesty. Well, to hell with that. If there is to BE amnesty for these Dreamers, then yes, it should come from the legislative branch, but that’s like…the lowest possible bar. That’s simply restoring things to the way they should be in Washington, but it doesn’t make the central idea of providing amnesty to 800,000 illegal immigrants any more palatable. Especially when, by the time lawmakers finish negotiating the bill, it will probably be more like 1.5-2 million illegals granted freedom from deportation.

If we believed, even for a second, that providing some kind of amnesty bill for these Dreamers would be the end of it, we wouldn’t be that adamant in our opposition. We would still be concerned, but it might be worth it to hammer out a deal favorable to better border security and stricter immigration laws. Unfortunately, we don’t believe it, and, in fact, we think it would only send a message to another generation of immigrants that they can come across our border, wait it out a few years, and get their turn when Washington decides to “have a heart” once again. That’s what happened last time and that’s what will happen again.