Let’s clear up a few things right now.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announcement today that the Trump administration will force the expiration of DACA, the program that gives short-term protections to young undocumented immigrants, is not a “delay”that will give Congress an opportunity to find a permanent legislative solution. Nor is the decision to put off immediate revocation of the program for all of its nearly 800,000 recipients a “compromise” on the part of Donald Trump, who, members of his administration have insisted, has been moved by so-called Dreamers. And no, despite Sessions’s remarks on Tuesday morning describing the decision as the “compassionate” thing to do for the country, it is not.
Effective today, the Trump administration has ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the successful program that has granted nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants short-term reprieves from deportation along with access to work permits, driver’s licenses, and educational opportunities. A memo released Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Elaine Duke, titled “Memorandum on Rescission of Deferred Action for
USCIS, the agency that processes DACA, will stop accepting new applications immediately. It will assess applications it has already received as of today, “on an individual, case-by-case basis.” Yes, for a key segment of the DACA population, today’s news includes a real benefit. Those whose DACA permits are set to expire within six months (by March 5, 2018) will have one month to file renewal paperwork, and, if they are approved, could theoretically maintain their status until the year 2020. Less than a quarter, or 190,000 young people may be able to apply for renewal before this cutoff, The Washington Post reported.
But because every person with DACA applies for and receives their approval on an individual basis, every single day someone’s status expires. And those whose DACA is set to expire on or after March 6 will be unable to apply for renewal. According to research from the Cato Institute, nearly 600,000 DACA recipients will see their status expire after that day. That’s the vast majority of those who are currently able to live and work in the country under DACA. For them, this six-month delay is no delay at all.
Janet Perez, a 25-year-old DACA recipient, is one of the luckier ones. She lives in the Bronx and has DACA until 2019. But Perez, who organizes with the New York State Youth Leadership Council, an undocumented-led youth organization, doesn’t see today’s announcement as compassionate. “Whether it’s now in the future, either way it’s still coming to the same conclusion and it’s just prolonging the time frame when it’s going to end,” Perez said.
Once permits expire, DACA recipients will join the ranks of the undocumented, who have already been targeted by the Trump administration’s ramped-up enforcement. Angie Kim, an organizer with the New York City–based immigrant-rights group MinKwon Center for Community Action, said that eventuality is a terrifying prospect for her and others like her. She credits DACA with giving her more than just work authorization.
Kim said that for many young people today the Trump administration’s decision will mean lots of hard conversations with family “about making plans if they lose their jobs. Thinking about whether they should self-deport before they’re deported by this [government]. It’s very scary conversations,” Kim said.
In a tweet this morning, Trump said he’d now refer the issue to Congress to fix. So let’s play this out. The six-month delay ostensibly buys the president and lawmakers time to figure out a long-term, legislative solution. It is true that DACA, which existed only at the discretion of the Obama, and now Trump, administrations, has never been a permanent solution for the nation’s young undocumented immigrants (let alone the 11 million undocumented immigrants, total, who are living in the United States). It has never conferred actual legal status on a so-called Dreamer. Those with DACA often described themselves as “DACA-mented.” It was their cheeky acknowledgement that DACA has always been provisional, temporary, and revocable.
If the problem is how to offer young undocumented immigrants who were raised in the United States, who are committed to building their lives in this country, and who have squeaky-clean records some avenue to pursue their educations and careers without fear of deportation and even, possibly, with the potential for legal status, Congress is absolutely the best venue for lasting change.
This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at January 21, 2018 3:04 PM MST