EMILY KOWALIK ’18
OPINIONS EDITOR
According to the White House Office of the Press Secretary, President Donald J. Trump “restored responsibility and the rule of law to immigration” by rescinding the previous administration’s memorandum creating the “unlawful” Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program last week.
The DACA program – an immigration policy meant to allow some individuals who came into the country illegally as minors to obtain a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and be allowed to have a work permit – was established by former President Barack Obama by executive order in 2012. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security explaining that DACA was not statutorily authorized and was therefore an unconstitutional exercise of discretion by the executive branch.
But many believe that Trump has turned DACA into a ticking time bomb for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are now forced to put their lives on hold for six months and place all their hopes on congressional action.
President Donald Trump is ending a program that allowed many unauthorized immigrants to work and live in the US – the most aggressive move of his immigration crackdown so far, and a decision that will ultimately put nearly 800,000 immigrants who came to the U.S. as children or young teenagers at risk of deportation.
Those currently covered under the program will be able to retain their protections and work permits until they expire. And those who are set to lose their protections on March 6 or later will simply fall back into unauthorized status. So, the luckiest will be protected through 2020. The rest will become vulnerable to deportation in March, according to Trump’s latest tweet on the issue at the time of writing.
But beyond the risk of deportation, those whose current protection by DACA is expiring may also face the loss of their ability to work legally in the US, the risk of inability to secure driver’s licenses in many states and a feeling that they have now become unwelcome in the country where they grew up.
Many questions arise from this tumultuous situation: Will Congress will be able to get its act together to pass an immigration bill? What are the chances a bill can be proposed that would satisfy both 60 senators and the president?
Senator Bernie Sanders called President Trump’s pronouncement ending DACA the ugliest and cruelest decision by any U.S. president in history. Sanders called on Congress to rally the American people to help reverse this decision to “take away the legal status of some 800,000 young people who have known no home other than the United States – young people who today have good jobs, [are] productive members of the economy, young people who are in school, young people who are serving in the military, and take away their legal status, and put them in a position where they could be deported and thrown out of the only country that they can remember.”
I agree and join in the hope that Congress can act swiftly, and in a rare display of unity, to resolve this issue.
