Although the legislation no longer generates the headlines it used to, the Dream Act still has plenty of champions on Capitol Hill. In fact, every year, the proposal’s proponents reintroduce the legislation, knowing full well it can’t pass, but reminding the political world and its intended beneficiaries that some still see it as a priority.
This year, however, the bill lost a high-profile co-sponsor. NOTUS reported:
Ahead of his reelection bid next year, Sen. Lindsey Graham dropped his support for the Dream Act, a bill to help undocumented immigrants that he co-sponsored each time it was introduced for nearly a decade.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin reintroduced the bill earlier this month. Instead of Graham as a Republican co-sponsor, Durbin paired with Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Graham told NOTUS he does not support the legislation because of the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the country.
As a political matter, the development probably won’t surprise many: The South Carolina Republican bears little resemblance to earlier iterations of himself, so it’s hardly shocking to see him walk away from a bill he spent years supporting.
As a practical matter, Graham’s shift probably won’t amount to much, since the Dream Act wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
But the senator’s position is emblematic of a larger reality that might go overlooked: There really isn’t much point to Democrats’ efforts to reach bipartisan deals with Republicans over immigration policy because GOP officials invariably abandon their own agreements.
The Dream Act is a classic example. In the not-too-distant past, Democrats were content simply to extend citizenship to young immigrants who entered the United States as children and who’ve been on American soil for nearly their entire lives. When Republicans balked at an approach they condemned as “amnesty,” it kicked off the bipartisan negotiations.
The result was the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act — better known by its “Dream Act” acronym — which was written in part by the late Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. Instead of “amnesty,” the idea was to create a path to citizenship for these young immigrants: graduate from high school, get conditional permanent residency status, pay some fees, and at that point, they’d become eligible for citizenship.
It was a bipartisan compromise championed by the likes of Graham and the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona — until GOP politics moved sharply to the right, some of the party’s old guard passed away and Graham decided to move with his party’s prevailing winds.
But this isn’t the only example. When Barack Obama reached out to Republicans on a possible immigration deal, they replied that they’d work with the Democratic White House if he boosted border security.
Obama did exactly that — at which point Republicans rejected a bipartisan agreement despite that.
Indeed, even after the “Gang of Eight” agreement took shape, not only did GOP officials oppose the bipartisan compromise, but Republican then-Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida ended up denouncing the legislation that he helped write.
Conventional wisdom suggests legislative breakthroughs on major issues are only possible when both parties accept concessions and make a deal. But what’s the point of working on agreements with Republicans on immigration when they so often abandon the very deals they used to like?
