This episode explores the precarious situation facing Dreamers who are stuck labeled as foreigners in a country they call home. Will they get their chance to achieve the American Dream?
This episode explores the precarious situation facing Dreamers who are stuck labeled as foreigners in a country they call home. We will discuss:
Please subscribe to Next Gen Voter to not miss out on future episodes:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-gen-voter/id1486673177
Hi everybody! I am Riley Daniel and this is the Next Generation Voter-the only podcast of the next gen, by the next gen, for the next gen. Today, I will be providing information about a government program that has been in the news recently: DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. I will explain to you the origins of the program during the Obama Administration, the protections it creates and who they apply to, the legal challenges that the program has faced and the court decision last week on the Trump Administration's attempt to end the program. As this decision has sparked a lot of excitement and controversy, I thought it would be helpful for young voters to have a detailed, factual explanation of what DACA does, as it is commonly mischaracterized in the news and on social media.
Throughout the first decade of this century, there was bipartisan support for restructuring the immigration enforcement and deportation process, specifically in regards to the plight of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children under the age of 16. Congress attempted numerous times to pass various versions of the DREAM act, which would have given these Dreamers, most of whom were in their late teens and early twenties, the right to temporary legal status for six years, provided that they were either attending or had graduated secondary school or had obtained a GED. If they achieved these requirements, then they would be eligible to begin on the path to permanent legal status, which required as a prerequisite at least two years of higher education or military service. The idea was that these children had not willingly violated immigration law, instead had been brought here by their parents, grew up here and knew no other country as home. If they were putting in the work and effort to become lawful, productive members of society, we should not discourage that. Unfortunately, due to the polarization of politics in Washington, each of these bills, despite having majority support and bipartisan sponsors, were not able to overcome the 60 vote senate filibuster and were unable to be passed. Frustrated with congress’s inability to pass legislation on this issue, in June 2012, President Obama signed a highly controversial executive order directing the department of homeland security to defer deportations on dreamers, provided that they met the same criteria that had previously been established in the dream act: namely, that they were under the age of 31 at the time that they were applying for DACA status, that they had entered the country as an undocumented immigrant under the age of 16, that they were a person of good character (that is to say little or no criminal history) and that they had either sought or were seeking higher education or military service. This program allowed the dreamers to obtain work permits and receive employer-based health insurance, necessities that thewy had previously been denied. In the five years that DACA was implemented with support from the executive branch, nearly 800,000 dreamers joined the program, each using it to obtain their chance at seeking the American Dream.
Immediately, the program faced widespread criticism from conservatives, who viewed it as an overreach of executive power by the Obama Administration. Seven states, led by Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit, currently working its way through the courts on the grounds that “The executive unilaterally conferred lawful presence and work authorization on otherwise unlawfully present aliens, and then the executive used that lawful-presence ‘dispensation’ to unilaterally confer United States citizenship.” This is a common argument made against DACA by its detractors, who claim that it gives undocumented immigrants citizenship. Although some DACA recipients have gone on to become naturalized American citizens, that was only after they went through the green card process in the same vein as a legal immigrant would. DACA itself explicitly is not a source to citizenship, and its recipients are forced to renew their temporary legal status every two years.
After the election of Donald Trump, there were several changes made to immigration policy and enforcement, including, due to threats of lawsuits by Republican state attorneys general, an announcement from DHS on September 5, 2017 that the DACA program would be wound down, immediately ending new applications to the program and restricting the renewal process for many recipients, and ending it for anyone whose status would have expired before March 2018. As DACA had been a program that had been important to the economies and educational institutions of many states, this announcement triggered a flurry of lawsuits, leading to injunctions being placed on the program’s termination by Federal judges in New York and California. The Trump Administration decided to appeal these injunctions to the supreme court, which heard the case this fall, and was tasked with deciding whether or not the Trump Administration's rescinding of DACA was constitutional. The decision, in Department of Homeland Security v. The Regents of the University of California, ruled 5-4, with Chief Justice Roberts joining the court’s four liberals that the Trump Administration had violated a law called the Administrative Procedure Act not in rescinding DACA, but in the way they ended the program. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority, because the Administration did not go through the process of providing rationale for terminating the program “We concluded that the total rescission was arbitrary and capricious” and they therefore struck down the administration’s action, upholding DACA, at least for now. Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, stated that the argument used by Roberts and the majority was irrelevant because the initial creation of DACA was unconstitutional, but the majority was unwilling to dig into the substance of DACA, instead putting off a ruling on the constitutionality of the executive order itself for a later day, when it is not an election year. As soon as the decision was handed down on June 19, President Trump tweeted that his administration would attempt to end the program again, this time following the process set out by the court in its ruling, making it very likely that DACA weiull be back at the supreme court this time next year. However, in the meantime, DACA seems to be a meaningful policy distinction in this year’s election, as President Trump supports dismantling DACA as part of a complete overhaul of the US’s immigration policy, while Vice President Biden supports the ruling and the program at large, as he sees Dreamers as Americans who deserve to stay in the US. In the meantime, the lawsuit filed by the states attorneys general, which I referenced earlier is still being fought in the courts, meaning it could end up being the case which decides whether or not DACA will stay. If Trump is re-elected, it is very likely that the program will be successfully and lawfully disbanded, while a Biden Administration would likely continue to protect Dreamers and possibly seek to add a path to citizenship. As it is likely that someone you know, whether a friend, a doctor, a teacher, or a family member, is a DACA recipient, it is an important policy that you should consider when voting this fall. The votes of Our Generation in November will have a profound effect on the future of Dreamers, which is why you should consider their situation carefully and make a decision based on whatever values you feel are most important to you.