The initial deadline for Congress to deal with the issue of ‘Dreamers’, the almost two million undocumented immigrants brought to the US as minors, will be reached on Monday, with two months of negotiations yielding no solution.
In September 2017, President Donald Trump decided to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) initiated via executive action by President Barack Obama in 2012, allowing Dreamers to work in the US free from the threat of deportation. But, Trump provided a six-month window for Congressional lawmakers to craft a solution to the issue, which they have so far failed to do.
Republicans and Democrats have constantly bickered over the Dreamers issue, activists and young immigrants have protested, and the President has also made it clear that even if a solution was reached, he would not support it without concessions including some of his own immigration proposals becoming law, something many in the Democratic Party refused to countenance. As a result, a deal has failed to be reached in time, leaving Congress embarrassed and almost 700,000 of the Dreamers who signed up for DACA in legal limbo.
The courts granted a temporary reprieve, with the deportation of DACA recipients prevented by two federal judges until all legal challenges to the cancellation of the program have been weighed. But this is only a temporary stay, and with the recent school shooting putting the gun control issue ahead of immigration, time could be running out.