The Trump Administration Has Announced the End of DACA -- Unless Congress Can Act To Save It (recode.net)
The Trump administration said on Tuesday it plans to scrap a program that allows about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children to stay and work in the country, shrugging off criticism from within the president's own party and prominent business figures. From a report: The Trump administration is essentially leaving Congress a six-month window of time to try to save it. The legal shield is known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and since its enactment in 2012, it has allowed roughly 800,000 undocumented young adults to live in the United States and obtain work authorizations every two years. [...] In practice, implementation is complicated. Those previously approved under DACA, with the permission to work in the United States, can continue to work without interruption until those approvals expire. And those who have already applied for protection or are seeking renewals will still have their applications considered by the U.S. government. For those whose permits are set to expire before March 5, 2018, though, the U.S. government will also allow them to renew their DACA status -- provided their applications are received before Oct. 5, 2017. Currently, there are about 201,000 young adults whose authorizations are set to expire this year, officials at the Department of Homeland Security explained Tuesday.
Tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google are no doubt going to blast the Trump administration's decision: Last week, those executives joined more than 400 other business leaders in calling on the president to preserve DACA. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who previously (and privately) pressed Trump on the issue, said on Sunday that 250 of his "co-workers" would be affected by the change. Microsoft indicated that about 27 workers spanning fields like finance and sales would be hurt from Trump's move. Zuckerberg said, "This is a sad day for our country. The decision to end DACA is not just wrong. It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American Dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it."
Tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google are no doubt going to blast the Trump administration's decision: Last week, those executives joined more than 400 other business leaders in calling on the president to preserve DACA. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who previously (and privately) pressed Trump on the issue, said on Sunday that 250 of his "co-workers" would be affected by the change. Microsoft indicated that about 27 workers spanning fields like finance and sales would be hurt from Trump's move. Zuckerberg said, "This is a sad day for our country. The decision to end DACA is not just wrong. It is particularly cruel to offer young people the American Dream, encourage them to come out of the shadows and trust our government, and then punish them for it."
Funny how American companies not being able to find enough affordable workers is a 'global problem', yet people not being able to find clean drinking water, enough food to eat, and/or safety from violence and corrupt governments is a 'them' problem.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Unfortunately, even the people who drafted DACA admit that Trump's in a bind here because the order is unconstitutional.
10 state sttorneys general gave Trump a September 5 deadline for ending DACA or they would sue to get it overturned. This same group had DAPA (the parental version) thrown out due to unconstitutionality and the argument against DACA is essentially identical. They would win in court, barring a reversal by the Supreme Court. The SC split 4-4 on DAPA, so the Appeals Court 2-1 against is the law of the land and no one expects that Gorsuch would find DACA constitutional.
Any dispassionate look at DACA sees that it's plainly unconstitutional. Unlike orders that deferred or gave a low priority to enforcement of immigration laws, DACA actually grants (temporary) legal status with no legal basis. Any attempt to find otherwise is really ends-oriented. Plenty of that sort of thing on both sides - but this would be really bad precedent.
The truly sad thing is that the "Dreamers" have supporters on both sides of the aisle - Republicans are pretty sympathetic to their plight as well. But, like anything, politics gets in the way - Democrats want a "clean" Dreamer bill while Republicans want something in return (either wall funding or mandatory e-Verify). Neither side is budging much at the moment (there are a few bipartisan bills out there, but each of the main conferences are waiting).
I don't tend to expect much from Trump (other than crazy uncle-style Tweeting at all hours) but even he seems to want to do something for the Dreamers. Hopefully, a deal can get done soon.
The Executive Branch is allowed to execute Congress's laws as they see fit. The Obama Administration gave guidance on how the deportation of undocumented immigrants was supposed to work. That's DACA. Completely constitutional.
And remember, Obama was called the "Deporter In Chief" for how fervently he was deporting them... More than 2.5 million were removed. He was not soft on immigration.
OF COURSE IT IS OK!!
That's precisely how the US government was set up...that the majority of power was to reside within the States, with only a limited, fairly weak Federal Government.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The similar legislation, DAPA, that applied to parents, was overtuned and the same legal arguments could overturn DACA if it were ever challenged. 10 state AGs threatened to do just that if the White House did not act on DACA before September 5th.
So it's not that it wasn't successfully challenged. It's that it was about to be and the precedents meant it didn't really stand a chance.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Uh those numbers have been flipped:
In 1992 the number of murders was 23,760.
In 2015 the number of murders was 15,696.
The amount reduced!!
Source: http://www.disastercenter.com/...
Post a valid link, and assume people won't check it??
Precisely!!
I"m guessing from your post, you're not a US citizen....but yes, the President is supposed to be a somewhat weak office within the triumvirate that is the US Federal government (executive, legislative, judicial).
The say he is the most powerful man in the word, in on respect, because his *is* commander in chief of all the US armed forces. This is to keep a civilian in charge of the military, and ensure that no one person keeps that power for too long.
But yes, when you wield what is pretty much the most powerful armed forces i the world, you are often thought of as the most powerful person in the world.
But in the US, the constitution was set up to ensure that ALL power was not in one place, to prevent a dictatorship, etc.
Those old guys in powered wigs in the 1700's actually were pretty bright, and its sad so many today in the youth seem to be set on breaking down the very things that mad the US a great nation to date.
As the saying goes..."Yeah, it sucks here, but it sucks a lot less than everywhere else in the world."
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
DACA wasn't law. It was "policy".
You know, the same way there is a law against speeding, and then a myriad of policy that goes into enforcing it. Where I live the law says speeding is exceeding the posted speed limit. In practice, the usual policy is not to stop anyone within 10km/h. And in practice the police only selectively enforce it -- high traffic areas, accident prone areas, some might point cynically at areas where the limit is set to low as 'revenue generating' areas. (I KNOW this is a real issue in some areas, im less convinced it is a significant motivation locally.) Meanwhile, in practice the police are mostly enforcing the cellphone ban, because that is what they have been directed to focus on that. So speed traps are rare right now, but cell phone traps are all over the place. They'll still bust you for speeding if you are obvious / dangerious / etc but that's not what they're looking for.
DACA was kind of the same thing... basically it was policy directing immigration to be lenient in specific cases (like not enofrcing a speedlimit if you are 1km/h over -- even though the law says that is illegal) and directing officers not to bother even looking for those cases, and to focus on something else instead.
THAT is well within the purview of the executive branch of government. Enforcment policy, and enforcement priorities is WELL within the purview of the government.
Did DACA overstep the bounds of policy into creating new law? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not, given that it has survived plenty of constitutional challenges already... e..g http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/op...
Personally, think DACA should be ended in favor of real legislation that does what DACA does. However that is not what the Trump administration is doing. They're just ending the policy because they want to, not because of any constitutionality. And that's fine, that's the new administrations prerogative; I don't agree with it... but the Trump administration has the same authority to set policy as Obama did.
It's not "as they see fit"...it's "he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed".
Anyway, if DACA had only been "enforcement discretion" you'd have a point. The executive could choose to devote limited prosecutorial resources along lines that would leave undocumented kids alone.
But DACA did a lot more than that. It provided work authorizations, travel authorizations (allowing illegal aliens to reenter the country), and created a self-funded agency without Congressional authorization (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law").
It was shot through with Constitutional problems. That DACA for Parents order was enjoined for just those reasons and the various States threatening to go to court over DACA would have based their arguments on the same reasons and likely would prevail on the same grounds.
DACA as a program, had it been done as an act of Congress, would almost certainly be all the good things people want it to be. But as a whim of Obama's pen, it was always suspect and subject to being undone at the whim of some other President. Indeed, Obama is seeing all his legacy being unwound simply because he spent so much effort bypassing Congress that he built his house on sand.