The more than 20-year odyssey to legalize some children of immigrant parents has reached a new low.
“Dreamers” do not have the right to exist without fear of being hauled off by federal officials and sent “home” to nations where they were born but not raised.
Their parents immigrated to the U.S., bringing them along, often as very young children. Toddlers know nothing of visas, checkpoints, and the complexities of U.S. immigration law.
This group of migrants are stuck, it is often said, “through no fault of their own.”
Many discover that they’re not right with immigration as teenagers when they try to get a driver’s license. If a person is here without the right documents, then nope – he or she cannot drive in most states.
The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act was first introduced to Congress in 2001. It never passed. We refer to it and the people it was intended to help by its acronym – Dreamers.
Just recently, a federal court put a serious gash in this flimsy hope – first put forward by the Obama administration – of resolving the status of these immigrant children on U.S. soil.
Former President Barack Obama, like his presidential predecessors and successors, failed to muster the political will necessary to pass substantial immigration reform. Recall that Democrats controlled both the House and Senate early in his first term.
Instead of using that political gift to do some permanent good for this group, he eventually passed an executive order in 2012 that’s known by the acronym DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
Basically, it’s immigration purgatory.
Here’s the cruel part: People who are deemed DACA recipients can slip backward into illegal status, but they can’t move forward to legalize their residency.
Those seeking DACA status can prove their fitness for this no man’s land role by checking off a series of requirements. To even be considered, they must pass “character” tests and standards that many U.S.-born young people could not meet.
They must pay fees, undergo a background check, be enrolled in high school or have graduated, possess a GED, or have served in the military. They must also agree to let the federal government gather and retain their biometric data.
These requirements align with what most people would argue are reasonable standards to become documented.
Except that DACA is not that for the 579,000 people who have attained it. It’s merely a placeholder. The designation is not permanent; it does not allow them to step forward further and become legal permanent residents, much less the higher tier U.S. citizens.
DACA designation merely says that they aren’t deportable. It allows them to work legally for a limited amount of time. Then, they have to re-apply for it all over again every two years.
And now, even this system could be ending.
Just this week, a judge has halted approval of more applicants. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen is akin to pulling up the drawbridge.
Hanen agreed with the states that brought the lawsuit against DACA – Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas, and Mississippi – that the administration circumvented Congress by going about DACA the wrong way.
President Joe Biden tried to answer problems raised in the judicial proceedings by recrafting the program while allowing for more public input. DACA always was a bit of a work-around because Congress has consistently refused to act on this issue.
The states in the lawsuit also claimed ,…
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