Dream activists confronted Jeb Bush in Iowa over the weekend and he appeared to reiterate his
CPAC promise to end President Obama's executive actions, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. David Weigel
has the transcript of the exchange:
DREAMER: Yes, but recently you said you were going to do away with that program, DACA.
BUSH: Exactly, and pass a law so there's permanence. What DACA does is it's only for two years, no more. The problem continues after that.
DACA is Obama's 2012 program that has provided around 600,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought here as minors with deportation relief and two-year work permits. Under Obama's 2014 actions, DACA would be expanded to cover more people and provide three-year work permits, though that expansion
has been put on hold by a federal judge in Texas. At CPAC 2015, Bush said
one of his first priorities as president would be "undoing by executive order what the president has done using authority he doesn't have."
It's nice, on the other hand, that Bush is interested in passing a law. But perhaps he should check in with congressional Republicans, who have obsessively taken aim at Dreamers since the very first week they took control of Congress.
Bush did use the word "citizens" when talking about his end game for Dreamers, but he also compared Obama's immigration actions to those of a dictator.
Bush: Let's give [Dreamers] priority to be citizens. But by the law, not by decree, because that's like a Latin American dictator.
In one short exchange (which took place in Spanish, btw) Bush has now exceeded the dismal response that Mitt Romney gave nearly five years ago when he
promised to veto the Dream Act should it reach his desk.
But Jeb Bush seems to favor rolling back a program that Dream activists have fought tooth and nail for and that ultimately helped flip Obama's approval ratings among Latino voters in swing states leading up to the 2012 election.
What this leaves is a gaping wide hole for Hillary Clinton. Though she has said she supports Obama's executive actions on immigration, she has not yet committed to extending them should she become president. Last December, the polling firm Latino Decisions found that 85 percent of Latino voters were likely to vote for Clinton if she pledged to extend Obama's immigration actions.