Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union, ” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) with a path to citizenship should be part of comprehensive immigration reform.
Partial transcript as follows:
TAPPER: DACA provided some temporary protections for undocumented aliens brought here as children through no fault of their own. Do you think that congress should codify DACA? Do you think there should be a path to citizenship for the so called Dreamers?
MCCAIN: Yes. and yes. I think it ought to be done in a comprehensive fashion. A few years ago we passed through the Senate with a vote of 68 votes a comprehensive immigration reform. that spaned science and technology and engineering people, guest workers a number of other provisions that makes it comprehensive. border security, et cetera. We need to do that and make the Dreamers part of it. Second of all, it is not conceivable to tell young people who came here as children that they have to go back to a country they don’t know. By the way there are 900 of these DREAMers that are serving in uniform in United States military. Are we going to go to a young man or woman serving in Afghanistan or Iraq today saying by the way, you’re a Dreamer get back to, fill in the blank. We’re not going to do that to these young men and women serving in uniform. We need a comprehensive plan. We need it to go through congress, which DACA did not, as you know. We did it once in the Senate and can do it again in a bipartisan fashion.
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