The Strategic Way Forward

The Virtues of Narrow and Temporary

The proposals that follow chart a narrow course – time-bound and specific to identifiable populations with status (and their immediate family members), or to those already in enforcement proceedings.  No permanent benefits are conveyed, and the broader questions that have bedeviled politicians are deferred for further study.  At the same time, the proposals forestall the humanitarian disaster and media firestorm that will ensue if the DACA recipients and others similarly situated, with long equities and significant community ties, are severed from their families and the only home they have known.

The Six Essential Surgical Reforms

All proposals to be implemented on a four-year temporary basis unless and until new laws are later passed to address new and/or unresolved issues:

1. Extension for four years of DACA legal status for an estimated 690,000 DREAMERS who currently have temporary DACA and are subject today to deportation but for temporary federal court injunctions that may well be lifted upon expected Supreme Court review. These current DACA beneficiaries have an estimated 250,000 U.S. citizen children. Reversion of their parents to unlawful status would confront their U.S. citizen children with highly uncertain fates.
2. Provision of four-year DACA legal status for an estimated 750,000 similarly situated DREAMERS not now in DACA status that the Trump Administration has asked Congress likewise to protect.
3. Extension for four years of legal status for 500,000 beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs the Administration terminated as of late 2019 that currently protects persons from Haiti, El Salvador, Nepal, and Honduras, affecting, as well, their estimated 240,000 U.S. citizen children.
4. Establishment of new and clarifying provisions – to be crafted by constitutional experts in consultation with Congress – that, consistent with American values, would prescribe the treatment of families, parents and children subject to arrest, detention, separation, release, and due process in immigration proceedings, both at the border and in the interior.
5. Enactment on a four-year sunset basis, a set of four-year pilot enforcement enhancements related to the border, interior, work sites, entry/exit of temporary visa holders etc., to be drawn from bills that have already secured wide bi-partisan support in Congressional floor votes. For example, in 2014 the House passed, with bi-partisan support and more than 400 votes, consensus proposals for such an approach.
6. Requirement of semi-annual GAO Reports, Cabinet Agency studies, and independent expert analysis of implementation of these temporary reforms, and all other major issues that this proposed narrow bill would not address, so as to better inform, with professional analysis, ongoing debates as they unfold.

Next Steps To launch

A range of American leaders from across the country and political spectrum are determined to achieve nonpartisan progress now.

We have begun to approach potential Congressional and national champions to test the power of the strategies here proposed. Our first challenge is to secure senior congressional champions of both parties who agree to take on this quest.

Introducing legislation in 2018 is strategically important to begin the process of resetting the debate, and will enhance chances of some progress in a lame duck session or in 2019 when the new Congress is sworn in.

Garnering support from two-thirds of Congress would also diminish risks of a Presidential veto and enhance chances of an override should a veto ensue. This is strategically desirable but not an imperative to move the effort forward.

Our unifying purpose is the Immigration Reform Imperative. Now.

Please join this effort. Discuss and act now within your own communities and leadership circles and among your respective Boards of Directors and with your elected officials and representatives. Now.