On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would stop deporting illegal immigrants who match certain criteria included in the proposed DREAM Act. On August 15, 2012, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services(USCIS) began accepting applications under the Obama administration's new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Thousands applied for the new program. Because DACA was designed in large measure to address the immigration status of the same people as the DREAM Act, the two programs are often debated together, with some making little distinction between them and others focusing on the difference between the DREAM Act's legislative approach in contrast to the implementation of DACA through executive action. As of January 2017, 740,000 people have registered through DACA..I don't want to take the side of Trump on this one . As MUCH as WE LOVE TO HATE 'EM , Donald Trump threw a foul ball to the much nothing a do Congress . For decades , Congress failed to enact immigration reform. They have kicked the can . Trump's actions though seem worthy of criticism has to , some how stir s the issue of immigration policy that is fair for all who want to be American . DACA was not for legal immigration. DACA is for kids whose parents brought them here either legally or illegally and they have lived here ever since, as Americans, speaking English, sharing in our culture. It’s not clear whether Republican - Democratic lawmakers, who have struggled for years to agree on an immigration reform package and who face a series of other high-stakes deadlines this fall, will be able to score a legislative solution by March. (2)>>And Trump appears to have dramatically upped the stakes, with the White House saying Congress needs to pass “responsible immigration reform" that not only addresses former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but also improves the green card system and establishes a merit-based immigration framework.
Wake up People . DACA was "temporary" !
So DACA is a "program" , its not exactly any kind of legislation . The original Dream Act never became a law that passed Congress . The first version of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was introduced in 2001. As a result, young undocumented immigrants have since been called Dreamers. Over the last 16 years, numerous versions of the Dream Act have been introduced, all of which would have provided a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth who came to this country as children. Some versions have garnered as many as 48 co-sponsors in the Senate and 152 in the House.Despite bipartisan support for each bill, none have become law. The bill came closest to passage in 2010 when the House of Representatives passed the bill and the Senate came five votes short of the 60 Senators needed to proceed to vote on the bill. Before there was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, there was Mr. Durbin’s Dream. In 2007, a version of the measure won the support of a majority of senators but fell victim to a bipartisan filibuster that included eight Democrats. Three years later, the bill passed the House but again did not get through the Senate. And in 2013, language allowing dreamers to stay in this country and work or attend school was included in a broader immigration package that passed the Senate with 68 votes — then failed in the House.Frustrated after years of failings, (3)>>President Barack Obama signed DACA as a temporary order in the hope that Congress would eventually pass the Dream Act and broader immigration changes. But with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress, the Dream Act stalled once again.
The DACA & DREAM ACT a real path to immigration "reform".
Hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people from around the world are waiting patiently for their backlogged visa and green-card applications to be reviewed. Imagine their frustration. Why don’t their dreams come first? The American system of immigration is needed to be reformed , it like the Department of Veterans Affairs need a overhaul . Getting into this country is a slow process , its vary expensive , less inviting . Nancy Pelosi called on House Republicans to help her “safeguard our young DREAMers from the senseless cruelty of deportation and shield families from separation and heartbreak.” Never has this Bay Area elitist called on House Republicans to join her in shielding native-born and law-abiding immigrant families from the senseless and preventable violence committed by criminals in this country illegally who’ve caused immeasurable heartbreak for decades in her overrun California sanctuary. In 2014 , The Washington Post put some conclusions forth on our immigration policy the dark side of the Dreamers act { see full article here -http://wapo.st/2xWf08p ) DACA has improved the lives of undocumented young people and their families and has also had a positive impact on the economy generally. (4)>>Multiple studies from across the political spectrum have demonstrated that ending DACA would the cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Still, it’s primarily a matter of fairness and humanity. That the benefits of DACA be utilized to help those who want to enter the nation LEGALLY . These young people have been here all their lives. They are, in every way, American kids. The BIG question is why for so long the parents of the Dreamers did not become / try to become US citizens through a amnesty program ?. Our outdated immigration policies create enormous legal barriers and make becoming legal impossible for many undocumented immigrants. This goes to the grain of immigration reform . Now it falls to Congress to keep DACA in place until legislators can pass a DREAM Act or immigration reform bill that ensures that these hardworking young people { anyone who wishes to immigrate legally } can continue to pursue their aspirations and contribute to America’s future.
DACA considerations to note :There are many, interlocking/interleaving reasons. Some are:Rewarding people who committed a crime introduces a moral hazard.For every person who gets citizenship for their children under DREAM act, there are (literally) tens of thousands, if not millions, out there, who - seeing the end result - will want to do the same for THEIR descendants.Yes, in a narrow technical sense, the children didn't commit the crime. But, the child getting a citizenship is a reward to the parents just as much as to the child.Rewarding people who committed a crime destroys the country's fabric in general.People see that some people commit a crime and instead of punishment, get rewarded. And those who are more sociopathic on average will take that as a nudge that crime is not such a bad idea.Rule of law is one of the main things distinguishing civilization from barbarism. Throw that out, and you erode the civilization significantly.Speaking of "fairness" - amnesty is patently unfair to many other people - both the legal immigrants; as well as those who chose not to break the US law and thus didn't illegally immigrate.As with many other marginal measures on polarizing political divide topics, it's seen as problematic by one side to allow another side ANY victory, no matter how small or sensible. This has several reasons:It moves the Overton windowIt up-moralizes the opposition side and demoralizes your sideIt gives the opposite side momentum, in general, in all facets of political life (fundraising, morale, participation, enthusiasm, perception).There is a long and sordid history of breaking promises on compromises, especially on the side that is pro-amnesty/pro-illegals. This is true both in general political life on various topics, and even on the immigration topic (the last large amnesty was done by Reagan, under the promised compromise to fix border security. The latter not just didn't happen, but got worse).Some measures are way too broad as far as how many people are affected.E.g. DACA's Wikipedia page says "At the program's start, the Pew Research Center estimated that up to 1.7 million people might be eligible". That's just at the start.Some measures (DACA extension) raise constitutional/separation of powers concern.Mostly over executive branch's actions that "should" be done by legislative.Tactical political calculations.For a host of reasons, most people who would become citizens under the amnesty are largely likely to vote "Democrat" (I don't have the poll ready to prove it, but it has almost nothing to do with the parties' respective stances on immigration, by the way).As such, it's self-defeating for many Republicans to support any amnesty, since it decreases their political power, even if they aren't opposed to amnesty for reasons listed above.For the sake of completeness, there are accusations that some do it out of racism. Given the weight of accusation, the onus is on the Dream act proponents to prove that - for example by showing that the opposition to the act disappears if it's restricted to non-latino (or also non-asian) illegals.
- What the LAW really says :
how can it be such people are considered "illegal" even though their presence here is no fault of their own? What "crime" did they commit?They're "illegal" in the sense that they don't (prior to any amnesty being granted) have any lawful right to reside in the USA, but they are residing in the USA. "Legal" and "not legal" aren't matters of "fault", they're matters of legal definition. To slightly misapply criminal terminology, there is no mens rea for "not having legal status to reside in the US", it's a strict-liability thing.Anyway, it's not the case that everything illegal is "criminal". Especially in US terminology, where "criminal" is often reserved to mean "felonious", therefore excluding "misdemeanour" crimes.I'm not a lawyer, but for example one relevant law might be 8 U.S. Code § 1227 (a) (1) (A) "Any alien who at the time of entry or adjustment of status was within one or more of the classes of aliens inadmissible by the law existing at such time is deportable". This alone doesn't assert that they've committed a crime. That whole section of USC is about people who have no legal grounds to remain in the USA, since they legally can be deported. These people who never had residency or who had a time-limited residency which has expired, are often informally referred to as "illegals" regardless of whether they've committed any criminal offence that can be prosecuted.In addition, they may actively have committed crimes once they reached the age of criminal responsibility, and/or once they reached the age of adulthood, and continued to reside in the USA without having legal status to do so. AFAIK it's not an offence merely to reside in the USA without status, so many or most "illegals" are not criminals in that sense, but a diligent prosecutor might be able to establish in particular cases that someone has "harbored" other illegal aliens or whatever. There could, I suppose, be offences related to employment or tax: it's certainly possible for an undocumented immigrant to pay tax, and many do, but many don't. So it would not be correct to assume than an "illegal" necessarily is a criminal.So far as the law is concerned, deporting a person who has no legal status to reside is not punishment, at least no more than evicting someone from private land where they have no right to live would be "punishment". Deportation is not considered a criminal matter. So, those who oppose DACA do not agree that, when someone does not have right to reside in the USA, "the least that can be done" is to let them stay in the country. They think the least that can be done is to deport them or ignore them, and any more is a kindness that they choose not to extend.Of course you are quite correct that many Dreamers have no practical ability to live productively anywhere else. But those who want them deported, or at least who believe that the state should reserve the right to deport them, do not necessarily feel that compassion towards non-US citizens is their highest moral imperative or political priority. Some proportion of them might feel that a person with no right to reside in the USA, is morally obliged to leave the USA at the first opportunity, regardless of their prospects in their country of nationality. However, that's not the legal situation.
NOTES AND COMMENTS:
(1)>>"DREAMers," Right now the Left is having a meltdown over Trump's ridding of DACA , but here is what "we" are not being told . According to Wiki-pedia , The DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) is an American legislative proposal for a multi-phase process for qualifying alien minors in the United States that would first grant conditional residency and, upon meeting further qualifications, permanent residency.The bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, SB-129 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D- Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R- Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times but has failed to pass. Why is it SO CONTROVERSIAL , here is a illustration . One key point to remember is that someone is in Daca because their parents did an illegal act in the first place. Their entire status here is based on an an illegal act done by their parent. They jumped the line of immigration, without any consequences. Giving amnesty to them is rewarding a crime Imagine someone robs a house, pushes out its original owner and take over it. His son lives here for his whole life. Is good mannered, faithful, does a decent job and is loved in the society . But that still means that his entire lifestyle and the money that supports it comes from a crime.Meanwhile the original owner and his son have to live in poverty and hardship. His son is not the ideal citizen, he has to fight for living. But this life wouldn't have been theirs if the original crime wouldn't have been committed.The original crime, unfairly swapped the lives of the two families. The original criminal parent lived in poverty and hardship and took over someone else's property and money to prosper his own life. (2)>>And Trump appears to have dramatically upped the stakes. In announcing the end of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asserted that the 2012 action “contributed” to the massive influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America that peaked in 2014.The president’s written statement on ending DACA echoed this claim — that it “helped spur a humanitarian crisis” involving the Central American children. The statement then tried to tie that crisis to violence by MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a Central American gang that has been operating in the United States since the 1980s. A White House fact sheet was slightly more nuanced: “Partly because of DACA, the United States saw a surge in illegal immigration by minors in 2013-2014, because they hoped to take advantage of the program.” (3)>>President Barack Obama signed DACA as a temporary order . Essentially, Obama was ordering a program of “prosecutorial discretion” that would not target for deportation undocumented aliens who meet these qualifications. When Obama announced the program, he said it was intended as a temporary action — and not a pathway to citizenship — because Congress had failed to pass legislation accomplishing the same goals. "The main reason the migrants had crossed into the United States was “to take advantage of the ‘new’ U.S. law that grants a free pass or permit” from the government, referred to in their home countries as “permisos,” the memo stated." Of Course the Trump administration linked the Dreamers with a surge in crime . The president’s written statement on ending DACA echoed this claim — that it “helped spur a humanitarian crisis” involving the Central American children. The statement then tried to tie that crisis to violence by MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, a Central American gang that has been operating in the United States since the 1980s. A White House fact sheet was slightly more nuanced: “Partly because of DACA, the United States saw a surge in illegal immigration by minors in 2013-2014, because they hoped to take advantage of the program.” (4)>>Multiple studies from across the political spectrum have demonstrated that ending DACA would the cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars. The United States could lose up to 700,000 jobs and suffer billions of dollars in lost economic output . The report examines the potential economic consequences of cancelling the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA. Under DACA, undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as minors are eligible to apply for a renewable work permit protecting them from deportation. Approximately 800,000 people, sometimes called "dreamers," have benefitted from DACA, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.An average of 30,000 workers could lose their jobs every month if DACA were repealed or permit renewals were held up, the report found. It also estimated that the loss of those workers could cost the country $460.3 billion in economic output over the next decade, with Medicare and Social Security contributions dropping by $24.6 billion.
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