Don’t leave immigrants’ fate to judges
The U.S. Supreme Court last week provided some relief for more than 800,000 people protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.
Democrats need to work with Republicans on a solution, and GOP leaders need to reduce the influence of hard-liners.
The program, established by the Obama administration, protects people who were brought to the United States illegally as children and enables them to stay in what for many of them is the only country they’ve known.
The Trump administration attempted to terminate DACA on the grounds that President Barack Obama overstepped his bounds in creating it without approval from Congress.
The court ruled that the Trump administration did not provide proper justification for rescinding the program, thus allowing it to continue. The ruling last week did not guarantee the long-term survival of DACA, as it leaves open the possibility for another attempt to drop the program. But having even a temporary reprieve was rightful cause for jubilation among program participants and their supporters.
It is good news, but even better news would be a successful effort to take this issue out of the realm of the courts and address it with a change in the law enacted by Congress and signed by the president.
As things stand, this or any future administration will have the ability to keep trying to end the program. The people who depend on it deserve certainty.
We believe the Trump administration was wrong to try to simply rescind the program rather than keep it going while attempting to address the problem legislatively.
But part of the fault lies with Obama. By setting up DACA via executive order, the former president placed it on a shaky foundation. Obama did a disservice to the people he was intending to help by establishing such a program without an act of Congress to back it up.
Meanwhile lawmakers have failed for years at enacting reforms that fix a broken system and acknowledge the reality of the role undocumented immigrants already play in the U.S. economy and in American communities. The nation needs a means for otherwise law-abiding individuals to gain legal residency status, if not citizenship. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have gotten it done.
As long as they face potential deportation, DACA participants are in a tough position. They shared information about their status with the government in exchange for legal permission to work in the U.S. and assurances that the government would not attempt to deport them. Many of those covered under DACA are here through no fault of their own. Deportation to their nation of birth would be exceedingly cruel. Besides which, many of them are making significant contributions here.
We recognize that a resolution to this dispute is exceptionally unlikely to happen in the current political environment. The court decision automatically makes the fate of DACA a significant issue in the November presidential election. If President Donald Trump wins, it’s likely another attempt to end the program will be brought before the courts. If former Vice President Joe Biden wins, it will end this particular threat to the program for at least a few years.
Nevertheless, we still believe that a bipartisan, legislative solution to this problem is imperative. Lawmakers should start laying the groundwork for a compromise on this and other immigration issues that have defied resolution for so long. Both parties need to stop using the lack of progress on these issues to their political advantage. Each side blaming the other for a lack of progress has been a tiresome exercise on this and countless other issues.
Democrats need to work with Republicans on a solution, and GOP leaders need to reduce the influence of immigration hard-liners who have played a major role in derailing past attempts at immigration reform.
It may seem futile at the moment, but we’ll continue making these arguments on this and other issues. Congress needs to get off the sidelines and stop leaving the lawmaking to presidents and judges. This is not how our government was intended to function.