Every week on Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week’s Question: Should DACA Be Ended?
Don Surber: We need to go back to having Congress pass laws, and presidents upholding them.
Sadly, we now live in a post-judicial world in which the courts oppose enforcing immigration law because the judges know better than we do. All of Washington does. They dare not reform immigration law because we deplorable people will not stand for it.
And so they rewrite it without ever being held accountable. DACA is an unconstitutional overstep of presidential authority.
There is no DREAM Act either. Never voted on.
And yet they are treated as law. I do not understand it. The judges want Joe Arpaio in jail, and the courts struck down Arizona SB 1070. Why? Because the federal judges do not want real laws upheld.
Just fantasy ones. Fake Laws like DACA and DREAM.
Yes, end DACA.
Dave Schuler : Yes. IMO mercy requires that some reasonable accommodation be arrived at for illegal immigrants brought here as children and who’ve never known any home other than the United States. But such a program should be implemented via the ordinary legislative process rather than by executive order.
Rob Miller:I pretty much said what I had to say about this here. There’s a legal, humane and just solution for this problem interested parties can read at the link.
There are a couple of points I think bear repeating. First, let’s remember that many of the DREAMers didn’t come here as young, unknowing children. A lot of them came here as unaccompanied teenaged males (or even older, but posing as teenagers to qualify) after President Obama expanded DACA and foisted DAPA on the American people in 2014 to legalize illegal migrant parents without even bothering to craft an executive order. El Jefe spoke and that was that. The idea was for the unaccompanied minors to be accepted as ‘refugees’ or DREAMers and then bring mom, dad, auntie, the cousins and who know who else under America’s generous family unification rules.
Second, giving certain illegal migrants preferred status just because of their proximity to our border, or because they belong to a certain demographic that is likely to vote for a certain political party is unjust. It discriminates against millions of people who would love to come to America LEGALLY but are caught in the byzantine web of bureaucracy and are forced to spend large amounts of time and money coping with ‘the system’ many times for years.
Again, for those DREAMers who were actually brought here as young children, there’s a fair, just and workable solution. I welcome your comments on it.
According to some recent reports, President Trump is going to kill DACA, but give Congress 6 months to craft a legislative solution. Ordinarily, it would be a welcome change from the days of El Jefe legislating from the Oval Office and illegally changing legislation whenever he felt like it. But given the number of amnesty favoring congress member of both parties, I doubt that whatever solution they throw together will be viable…or benefit the country.
Laura Rambeau Lee :With the stroke of his pen President Obama signed an executive order in June of 2012 creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA). DACA allows illegal immigrants who came to the United States as minors to receive a renewable two year period of deferred action from deportation and are eligible to obtain work permits. To qualify these persons must have entered the United States prior to their sixteenth birthday and before June 2007. They must be currently in school, a high school graduate, or be honorably discharged from the military. They cannot have any felony convictions or significant misdemeanors or be a threat to national security. DACA does not give them a path to citizenship. If President Obama had worked with Congress on real immigration reform instead of going it alone DACA might have been a part of such legislation.
Now President Trump faces the challenge of rescinding Obama’s illegal executive order. This could be his opportunity to get Congress to finally address the issue of illegal immigration. Perhaps he could allow DACA to stand for a limited period of time with a time certain end date while insisting Congress work together and craft a bill they can pass and he can sign into law. He could use this as leverage to get funding for the wall. Americans would be much more open to immigration reform and address the issue of the illegal immigrants already here if they saw a real effort to end illegal immigration.
We have already seen a significant decrease in those coming into the country illegally since President Trump was sworn into office. Perhaps something similar to DACA can be included as it seems a reasonable policy for the children who as minors were brought to the United States and grew up here. They are not the criminals, their parents or the people who brought them here committed the crime of illegal entry into the country. As for those who came here legally and overstayed their visas or who came here illegally in the first place the law should be made clear as to how we should deal with them. And the law should be enforced. First and foremost, anyone here illegally who has been convicted of a crime should be deported immediately. Perhaps those who have lived here for many years, who have not committed a felony, voted illegally, nor received public assistance could be given work permits and allowed to remain in the United States. They would have to leave for two weeks every year or be deported if they remain unemployed for over sixty days, the same as others who come here on a guest worker visa. They should NEVER have a path to citizenship nor be permitted to vote. This is their punishment for coming here illegally. If they desire a path to citizenship they must return to their home country and go through the proper channels for legal immigration.
Despite his portrayal by the main stream media as arrogant and heartless we have witnessed the compassion of President Trump. The entire country saw this in the past week as he visited the victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana. The media found it hard to criticize his response to this devastating tragedy as he took control and set the tone for the rescue, recovery and relief efforts. We saw the stark contrast of people coming together as Americans and helping each other without concern for race or politics while the media continued to espouse their agenda of divisiveness to an ever decreasing audience.
Hopefully President Trump can build on the good will of the past week to encourage Congress to do their job and pass real immigration reform.
Well, there it is!
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