Okay, so DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). That's the current Divisive Issue of the Week. I'll start with a little quick-and-dirty history on DACA before I discuss the recent developments. DACA was President Obama's 2012 executive action on immigration, which partly resulted from repeated Congressional failures to pass its own piece of immigration reform, known as the DREAM Act. Remember, executive action. That will become important later. I'm not sure how DACA meshes with the proposed DREAM Act, or with Congress' 2013 immigration reform act (S.744), and that's further down the rabbit hole than I plan to go.
That's DACA in a nutshell. Now, as anyone who has followed the news recently knows, President Trump announced that he plans to roll back DACA, along with a complementary program called DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans). His reversal will be delayed for six months, to give Congress time to act (presumably to craft its own legislation). Okay, unpopular opinion time. . . Constitutionally, Trump is doing the right thing here. Congress is the lawmaking branch of government, and it has the duty to come up with immigration laws. Yes, Obama faced an extremely stubborn and unruly Congress (it absolutely lived up to it's nickname of "The Party of No"), but that's how the framework of government is structured. The Founders assigned lawmaking authority to Congress; that duty was never granted to the President/Executive Branch. I can understand Obama's frustration and desire to get something done - Congress was doing its best to block him at every turn, and nobody would stand for that. It's human nature to push back against another person or group of people preventing you from accomplishing anything. Maybe one person in 1,000 could resist that urge. But the president was (is) supposed to resist that urge. It's one of the core principles of the federal government - the president does not craft legislation. There's no "except if Congress won't cooperate" loophole.
Not that Congress is blameless. I'm not giving Obama a pass, but I understand why he acted the way he did. He stepped in to fill a vacuum that Congress created, and he saw the obstructionist Congress as an obstacle to overcome. It had six years and change to craft decent legislation, but instead it grandstanded with stunts like trying to repeal the ACA over fifty times - a task Congressional Republicans knew they couldn't achieve, but did anyway to keep their voters energized - and when the GOP gained a unified government in the 2016 elections, it had nothing prepared. The GOP railed against the ACA for six years, and evidently put zero effort into writing a better piece of legislation. Congress didn't govern, it obstructed and it abandoned its responsibility.
Now, the immigration issue is back in Congress' court, where it should be according to the legislative process. Well, the CATO Institute predicts that rolling back DACA & DAPA will have a high economic cost:
"We estimate that the fiscal cost of immediately deporting the approximately 750,000 people currently in the DACA program would be over $60 billion to the federal government along with a $280 billion reduction in economic growth over the next decade."Those are massive economic consequences, and if Congress was smart, it would vote to keep DACA in place, or at least craft some nearly-identical legislation. This should be an easy decision. However, Trump is still popular with the GOP base, and they want to see DACA repealed, in addition to being anti-immigrant. One of Trump's key campaign promises was stricter immigration reform; and while he's a terrible statesman, he knows how to court public opinion. Basically, Congressional Republicans are in a bind: rescind DACA and take a huge economic hit or preserve it somehow and enrage their base. I predict Congress will let DACA lapse, because the Trump cabinet confirmation hearings and the ACA/BCRA fiasco showed that many Congressional Republicans will still vote along party lines, even if that vote carries serious economic consequences. I do not trust Congress to make the smart decision here.
Even though I think Congress would be making a huge mistake by reversing DACA, it is Congress' mistake to make. Trump is actually doing the right thing by rolling back an executive order and putting the responsibility on Congress. Is repealing DACA cruel, foolish, and petty? Absolutely. But we have to see beyond the immediate policy outcome we want and look at the long game. No single official or branch of government should have too much power, and there is a convincing argument that the Executive has concentrated too much power over the past few decades. Curbing that power will cause pain sooner or later - if not DACA, it will be something else. But it needs to be done.
A few additional links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html?pagewanted=all
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/349148-daca-debate-turns-toward-congress
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/trump-dreamers-immigration-daca-immigrants-242301
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