A lame-duck session of Congress isn’t a time for creativity and new initiatives. But there is a simple bill that could pass both chambers, be signed by this president and help some deserving people throughout the United States.

The Republicans control Congress for a few more weeks. And, as President Trump keeps saying, he would like money appropriated to build his wall along the southern border with Mexico. He surely won’t get that money any time in the next Congress, with a Democrat-controlled House.

Earlier this year, the president offered to give a chance for legal status not only to nearly 700,000 “dreamers” — those undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but to a million others who were either too young to apply or chose not to. (I presume that, to get legal status or a path to citizenship, all 1.7 million would have to show, as DACA recipients do, that they have never been convicted of a felony or a serious misdemeanor.)

Why not pass a simple bill: an appropriation for the wall, alongside an eventual path to citizenship for DACA recipients and long-term legal status for the rest?