President Biden last week announced plans to reinstate Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which has allowed many lifelong undocumented Americans to avoid deportation for more than 10 years but has faced legal opposition.
DACA never should have lasted 10 years; it was intended as a stopgap measure to enable foreign-born Americans, who were brought here as children and know no other home, to stay here legally while Congress worked on legislation to codify their legal status.
But after more than a decade Congress still hasn’t done its job. That legislation is still needed, and DACA is still needed until that happens.
DACA currently is on hold, after U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen of Brownsville ruled it invalid because it was implemented without public comments and other measures — even though countless presidential executive orders have been imposed on Americans without them. Biden took DACA through the process to meet Hanen’s objections. The program is scheduled to back into effect on Oct. 31, which should give Hanen plenty of time to assure that the steps we requested were taken. Of course, that also gives opponents time to file new legal challenges.
DACA enabled residents to live here legally and enroll in college or work without fear of deportation if they have lived here since June 2007 and were younger than 16 when they arrived. More than 600,000 people have gotten DACA permits and used them to be fully contributing, tax-paying members of our country, and their communities. Nearly 30,000 of them work in the healthcare industry, working on the front lines and saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In more than a decade, some of the original DACA petitioners have become even more entrenched, creating families who are legal, natural-born American citizens. Some of those children already are old enough to petition for their DACA parents to seek “green card” legal residency visas.
President Barack Obama originally created DACA in response to Congress’ inability — or lack or will — to give these lifelong Americans the legal status they deserve. They generally are known as Dreamers, in reference to the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which originally was filed in 2001 and has been refiled various forms nearly a dozen times since. The measure seems to have bipartisan support, with some versions having more than 150 House members and nearly half of the Senate as cosponsors.
With that much support, it shouldn’t have taken much to address sticking points and pass the legislation. Unfortunately, the popularity of Donald Trump, an ardent immigration foe, now makes the bill harder to pass.
Thus, DACA lives on as a way to keep American families together, jobs filled and taxpayers contributing to our country and their communities while their legal status remains in limbo. Dreamers have proven their value to our country, and as businesses continue to struggle to find workers, they are desperately needed.
Let us hope that as Hanen reviews Biden’s response to his ruling, he focuses on the applicable law and not on the whims of a vocal minority who oppose immigration for no good reason.
