President Trump Could Win with the Dreamers

Immigration could be an opportunity for success where past administrations have failed.

One of the odder aspects of President Trump’s apparent immigration about-face this week is that the effort to shield hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants from deportation has enjoyed bipartisan support—a rare feat these days.

For all his anti-immigrant huffing, Mr. Trump has exhibited something of a soft spot for the so-called Dreamers, who were brought here illicitly as children but granted permission to live and work legally in the U.S. under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump called DACA an unconstitutional use of executive-branch authority and vowed to terminate it if elected. Yet he has also shown sympathy for the program’s beneficiaries.

The president has expressed his “love” for the Dreamers and promised to “resolve the DACA issue with heart and compassion” for them. “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud,” he told Time magazine after the election. “They got brought here at a very young age, they’ve worked here, they’ve gone to school here. Some were good students. Some have wonderful jobs. And they’re in never-never land because they don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal

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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal