Sen. Dick Durbin, the majority whip,
said repealing the "don't ask, don't
tell" policy and passing the Dream
Act were a matter of justice and
fairness.
"We do not in this country hold the
crimes and misdeeds of parents
against their children," Durbin,
D-Ill., said in reference to the
Dream Act. He has been trying to
pass the legislation for about a
decade.
Earlier Tuesday, Education Secretary
Arne Duncan said he sent a letter to
Reid and Senate Republican leader
Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., backing the
Dream Act.
"America is the only country they
know ... they deserve every
opportunity to go further in life.
Our country needs the benefits of
their skills, their talent and their
passion," Duncan said.
Congress has failed to take up a
comprehensive immigration bill the
past two years. President Barack
Obama has been under fire in the
Hispanic community for failing to
keep his promise to tackle
immigration reform in the first year
of his presidency. Some have feared
Hispanic voters will stay home because
of the inaction.
In April, Obama said Congress lacked
the "appetite" to take on
immigration, essentially removing it
from the legislative agenda.
As the prospects for a sweeping
immigration bill looked bleak, young
activists began lobbying Democrats
to separate the Dream Act from the
immigration reform package and try
to pass it on its own.
The students, risking deportation,
protested at lawmakers' offices and
tangled with immigration reform
advocates who did not want the
comprehensive immigration bill
divided.
In some cases, the Obama
administration has deferred the
deportation of some of the young
people while the politics of the
bill played out, drawing heavy
criticism from some Republicans.
McCain said laws should be followed
in regard to deportation of the
students.
"What am I going to tell people in
Arizona when I legalize 2
million people here, when we haven't
secured the border?" he said.
This summer, Obama signed a bill
providing $600 million to pay for
the deployment of 1,200 National
Guard troops to the border and to
beef up other border and immigration
enforcement.
In a day of fast-moving action,
Republicans released a draft of a
memo they said was composed by
Department of Homeland Security
staff to explore ways to create a
more lenient immigration system,
with expedited approvals for visas
and family reunification, and
measures to head off deportations of
undocumented immigrants.
"Done right, a combination of
benefit and enforcement-related
measures could provide the
administration with a clear-cut
political win," reads the draft
memo, dated Feb. 26, 2010. The
draft, released by Republican
senators to the news media, does not
cite an author. A Republican
congressional staff member who spoke
on the condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to
talk about the matter said the memo
was sent to Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano.
"We would need to give the
legislative process enough time to
play out to deflect against charges
of usurping Congressional
authority," the 10-page memo says.
Referring to the hopes for passing
comprehensive immigration reform
(CIR), it adds, "announcement of
such measures would have to wait
until it was evident that no
legislative action on CIR was
possible by the current Congress.
This is likely to mean the best time
for administrative action will be
late summer or fall -- when the
midterm election season is in full
swing."
The idea that the department was
seeking to administratively
accomplish what Democratic lawmakers
had failed to deliver legislatively
was ludicrous, said Matt Chandler, a
DHS spokesman.
"As we have said repeatedly, DHS
will not grant deferred action or
humanitarian parole to the nation's
illegal immigrant population," he
said in an e-mail, as he explained
that the agency welcomed policy
proposals from staff, but rejected
bad ideas. Already, he added,
immigration authorities'
"record-breaking enforcement
statistics speak for themselves -
removing more aliens in 2009 than in
any prior year in the agency's
history and already surpassing
records for criminal alien removals
in 2010 - and demonstrate that we
are doing more than ever before to
enforce U.S. immigration laws. To be
clear, we are not engaged in a
'backdoor' amnesty and are on pace
to place more people in immigration
proceedings this year than ever
before."
