Trump ends amnesty for 800K ‘dreamers’
‘DACA unconstitutional’
WASHINGTON, United States, Sept 5, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ended an amnesty that protected from deportation 800,000 people brought to the United States illegally as minors.
“I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama Administration is being rescinded,” Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions said.
Sessions argued the amnesty put in place by former president Barack Obama was unconstitutional and “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”
Trump’s action, rescinds a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The program, is supported by Democrats and many business leaders. The Trump administration said no current beneficiaries of the program would be affected before March 5.
Sessions said the action does not mean the DACA recipients are “bad people.”
“To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. It’s just that simple. That would be an open-border policy and the American people have rightly rejected that,” Sessions said. The move marked the latest action by Trump that is sure to alienate Hispanic Americans, a growing segment of the US population and an increasingly important voting bloc. Most of the immigrants protected by DACA, dubbed “Dreamers”, came from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Trump’s action, deferring the actual end of the program, effectively kicks responsibility for the fate of the Dreamers to his fellow Republicans who control Congress. But Congress has been unable since the president took office in January to pass any major legislation and has been bitterly divided over immigration in the past.
Obama bypassed Congress and created DACA through an executive order.
Trump
Fate
Trump suggested in an earlier tweet that it would be up to Congress to ultimately decide the fate of those now protected by the program. He tweeted, “Congress, get ready to do your job — DACA!”
“Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST!” Trump added in a second, retweeted message. “The forgotten men & women will no longer be forgotten.”
Sessions’ announcement came the same day as a deadline set by a group of Republican state officials who said they would challenge DACA in court unless the Trump administration rescinded the program. Many believe the program would not hold up in court. Trump’s plan to take a harder line on young immigrants unless Congress intervenes threatens to emphasize deep divisions among Republicans who have long struggled with the issue, with one conservative warning of a potential “civil war” within the party. Congressional Republicans have a long history of being unable to act on immigration because of those divisions.
Trump has spent months wrestling with what to do with DACA, which he slammed during his campaign as illegal “amnesty”. Many of his closest advisers, including Sessions, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and former chief strategist Steve Bannon argue that the program is unconstitutional and have urged Trump to follow through on his campaign promise to end it. But Trump has repeatedly expressed sympathy for the young people protected by the program, describing the decision as one of the most difficult he’s had to grapple with as president.
“I think the Dreamers are terrific,” Trump said last week, using a term popularized by supporters of the program, which was created in 2012 as a stopgap as the Obama administration pushed unsuccessfully for a broader immigration overhaul in Congress.
All the while, his administration has continued to issue new permits and extensions to immigrants who qualify.
But his approach — essentially kicking the can down the road and letting Congress deal with it— is fraught with uncertainty and political perils that amount, according to one vocal opponent, to “Republican suicide.”