Is there a path for the ‘Dreamers’ to finally gain legal status? Could a ‘regularization’ of this group of more than three million illegal immigrants be imminent?
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., whom I interviewed on my radio show Wednesday, didn’t sound too optimistic about passing the final appropriations bill for FY 2026 — the bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security — but he also didn’t rule out “regularization” for the “Dreamers,” provided the same bill also includes a financial knockout for “sanctuary cities and states.”
President Donald Trump, Thune noted, has long been open to regularizing the Dreamers’ status. If Democrats in Congress actually want to get anywhere with their latest funding stunt, they should ask for legal status for the Dreamers while also being prepared to put pressure on sanctuary cities.
On Tuesday, I argued on this platform for just such a deal — a “Nixon-to-China” compromise that President Trump could achieve, and that no other Republican would dare attempt, let alone succeed in, implementing.
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The president showed the way during his first term with his “First Step Act” criminal justice reform bill. Now he could take the lead again — this time to secure long-awaited “regularization” for the Dreamers — reflecting a position shared by the vast majority of Americans: Illegal immigrants brought here as minors should not be deported to their countries of origin, if those countries can even be identified.
On Wednesday, I proposed such a bill to the majority leader, and his polite refusal reflects the two decades of scars that nearly every Republican lawmaker carries from past immigration battles.
A hard core of deportation absolutists opposes the regularization of the Dreamers, and their size often obscures how small their numbers really are. That kind of sharp rejection of common-sense solutions must in turn be rejected by the president and Republicans in Congress.
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The coalition that returned the president to the Oval Office was based on common sense across the border. Close it first – as the president has done. Second, finance and complete the wall, which is under construction. Third, detaining and deporting the most dangerous among the country’s tens of millions of illegal immigrants — a challenge made virtually unsolvable by President Joe Biden’s four-year border failure but now being addressed.
A “First Step on Immigration Act” would be a continuation of the commitments the president campaigned on, and should not attempt to be a “comprehensive solution” to the illegal immigration mess left by the Biden administration.
Such “comprehensive” legislative plans rarely make it through Congress, because either the political right or the political left—or both—rise up to shoot them down, often with good reason.
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First, these efforts over the past two decades have promised a “pathway to citizenship” that should never be available to anyone who broke the law to get here. Millions wait patiently in line to legally enter the United States, and those who break that barrier cannot stay while also gaining the right to vote or access rights reserved for Americans who have paid taxes for decades for programs like Medicare and Social Security.
There are “first steps” toward making immigration enforcement rational, just as President Trump’s first steps in his second term were to close the border, and just as Congress’s first step was to fully fund construction of the border wall. Check and check.
The next steps should include granting “blue cards” to Dreamers – and to any other narrow category of illegal immigrants on which there is consensus – but only if these grants come with serious penalties for any city, county or state that refuses to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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The United States must be consistent in its message: We are a hospitable and compassionate country, and we will regularize the Dreamers. But we are also a nation of laws, and no federal funding should flow to jurisdictions whose law enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate with ICE to identify and deport illegal aliens who have been arrested and in custody.
Common sense on compassion, combined with common sense on compliance with federal law, is the sweet spot for the next phase of solving the illegal immigration crisis.
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Democrats have given President Trump top priority in this debate. They believed they could get the last credits fighting over ICE. Instead, the president and Republicans in Congress should be talking about the Dreamers and sanctuary cities.
Good policy can also be good politics. Consult almost any poll on immigration. A “First Step on Immigration Act,” based on “80-20” positions—which eight in ten Americans agree with—is a great starting point.
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