More than 700,000 immigrants have no idea what their lives are going to look like six weeks from now. They’re currently protected from deportation and allowed to work legally in the US under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program (which began in 2012), but President-elect Donald Trump could revoke those protections on day one of his presidency if he so chose. [...]
It’s not clear whether the bill will pass Congress — or whether Trump would want to sign it if it did. And even if it did pass, the BRIDGE Act would only protect a fraction of the unauthorized immigrants currently worrying about their futures under Trump. [...]
Only 28 percent of Americans, according to a post-election poll, want to see Trump strip protections from those immigrants; 58 percent would oppose it. If Donald Trump, who kicked off his campaign by talking about immigrant rapists and murderers, kicks off his presidency by revoking work permits from, say, 20-something engineers with Southern accents, he might face a serious political backlash — and so would Republican legislators. [...]
Of course, the element of Trump’s base that is already salivating at the possibility of mass deportations would be disappointed and furious if Trump doesn’t revoke DACA — and even more disappointed and furious if he signs a bill allowing hundreds of thousands of people to stay. (And Trump’s own attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, would probably counsel the president not to sign the BRIDGE Act.) But if Trump wants to play dealmaker, he’s going to end up upsetting those people anyway.
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