Yesterday, Sens. Harry Reid and Dick Durbin sent a letter to the president requesting that the administration set up a process by which undocumented immigrants who might acquire a path to citizenship could apply for "deferred action," which would give them a couple of years to remain in the country rather than being deported.
The letter, which is signed by more conservative members of the Democratic caucus like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, takes pains to emphasize that Bush-era DHS officials also recommended pursuing deferred action in order to focus on those undocumented immigrants who pose the biggest threat to public safety. Students who would be eligible for citizenship under the DREAM Act have been left in the lurch since the bill was filibustered during last year's lame-duck session.
Conservatives will call this "stealth amnesty" if they haven't already, but that's not entirely accurate. What this would mean is that the government would agree not to deport them since they aren't dangerous, so they shouldn't be a priority. The administration has granted deferred action to students in the past, but what the senators are asking is for the government to set up a public process by which DREAM-eligible students could apply for deferred action before deportation is imminent. This isn't citizenship, though, or even a path to citizenship, so it can't really be described as amnesty as the word is traditionally used in the context of immigration. It's really just the government saying on an individual basis, "You're not the kind of undocumented immigrant we're worried about right now." In other words, the U.S. should focus on deporting murderers, not Georgetown students.
Many Republicans, of course, would simply prefer we deport everyone everywhere at once, whether or not we have the resources or capability to do so. ICE Director John Morton has said the government only has the resources to deport about 400,000 people a year, and it should focus on the most dangerous people among the 11 million here illegally. The administration has, contrary to popular belief, been coming very close to the high end of that number, even when juking the stats. In order to do so, they've had to go far beyond just deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes -- because there just aren't that many.
