On Tuesday Sept. 5th, one of the legacies that former president Barack Obama left behind was dissolved by the Trump Administration.
It was announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) would end with a six month hiatus.
This executive order issued by Obama on June of 2012, allowed for children that were brought into this country “illegally” the opportunity to work and go to school without fear of deportation.
There is a window of hope to pass meaningful legislation for these Dreamers, a term that came out of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and Trump stated on his press conference—by that I mean Twitter—that “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do).
If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!” It seems that the matter is being left to Congress, the same Congress that couldn’t get anything passed in 2012 or 2013.
This seems to be a stroke of ego for mainly conservatives, to claim they are bringing back justice to their country, to make sure no one is getting unfair advantages.
However, the notion of deporting people for coming here as kids at no choice of their own — is not just unpatriotic, it’s anti-life and non-Christian. Just from an economic perspective, DACA was self sufficient according to public data.
According to the Journal of Public Economics, Volume 143 of Nov. 2016, DACA made these children employable, able to pay into a system of taxes, increased their communities income distribution, and in conclusion or that made immigrant communities safer.
These young Americans have not only become self determined, but they are model citizens, according to reports from The Hill.
Immigrant communities are actually safer and less crime-ridden than their birthright citizen counterparts.
The reason Dreamers are not only more educated, employable, and commit fewer crimes than their citizen counterparts, is due to how strict DACA qualifications were set out to be.
The renewal fee itself is $400 every two years. Multiply that by 800,000 and that is an income of $320,000,000 to the U.S. government paid by these young adults.
Many Human Rights watchdog organizations such as Human Right’s Watch, are claiming that the removal of DACA is a humanitarian issue, since many of the Dreamers have never been to their parents native countries and have spent most of their lives as Americans.
For a country that was built by immigrants, it’s disheartening to see immigrants of color be pushed aside as the wrong type of immigrants that should be allowed in.
It can be said that there are laws in this country and that the rules need to be followed; that is understandable.
However, no one came into this country by the rules, and no one asked for stake in this land, I am sure the Native Americans would love a word with modern day descendants of European conquerors that came to forcibly take the Americas away from them.
As a nation that is apparently Christian, it’s odd to see many conservatives happy with the DACA repeal, as if that’s the moral and ethical standard we should have in this country. About 40 years ago, debate about immigration was compassionate towards undocumented Americans by Bush Sr. and Ronald Reagan.
Ironically, it was the Reagan Administration that passed Amnesty and granted citizenship for undocumented Americans, as he saw it as the right economic and moral decision to make.
What is great, nonetheless, are the people that are standing up for Dreamers, those that are out there ready to protest and mobilize against hate and bigotry.
The president of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, has now filed to sue President Trump following a trend of many states and even cities, New York City being one of them.
It’s hard to fathom how it must feel to live in limbo for the next 6 months, as Dreamers’ lives are at stake here.
If not resolved, this can leave a stain on the fabric of this country, that won’t wash out anytime soon.
The world is watching, what example are we going to set?
