The Supreme Court has said that it will stay out of President Trump’s move to rescind the protections extended to Dreamers under the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), meaning participants will still be able to renew their status. Although the move may lessen pressure on Congress to sprint toward a solution for DACA by March and it’s roughly 800,000 participants — undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, it does not change the need for a permanent solution to preserve DACA and protect Dreamers.
The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are clear and consistent when it comes to how we are to treat the stranger. Across the books of both testaments, in narrative, law, prophecy, poetry and parable, the Bible consistently spells out that it is the responsibility of the citizen to ensure that the immigrant, the stranger, the refugee, is respected, welcomed and cared for. It is what God wants us to do, but it also recognizes that we too were immigrants — and immigrants we remain. “Like my forebears, I am an alien, resident with you,” says Psalm 39.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Jesuit Conference Office of Justice and Ecology, and the Northeast Province of the Society of Jesus have been proactive in support of preserving DACA. The Scriptural call to welcome the stranger, the depth of Church teaching on the issue of immigration, and the bishops themselves call on Catholics everywhere to act. “Our faith compels us to stand with the vulnerable, including our immigrant brothers and sisters,” USCCB leadership wrote last week. “We have done so continually, but we must show our support and solidarity now in a special way. Now is the time for action.”
A path to citizenship for the Dreamers is also supported by a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives, and major editorial boards nationwide (including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times). If all that weren’t enough, DACA remains overwhelmingly popular among Americans of all political stripes. Polls put its approval rating at roughly double that of President Trump himself. Even the Chamber of Commerce, usually a reliable backer of the Republican legislative agenda, called the decision to end DACA “contrary to fundamental American principles.”
The DACA program was introduced in 2012 by President Barack Obama as a stopgap measure that would shield from deportation people who were brought into the United States as children. The status is renewable, lasting two years at a time. DACA was also the only humane choice Barack Obama had in the face of Congress’s failure to pass any meaningful immigration reform in the last two decades. The only bad thing that could be said about DACA is that, because it was a presidential memorandum, it was always vulnerable to being undone by a shortsighted administration playing to its base.
Last September, President Trump announced the end of DACA. DACA recipients are tax paying, law-abiding Americans (anyone with a serious criminal history is ineligible) who serve this nation in myriad ways, including in our armed forces. DACA recipients are often referred to as Dreamers, after a similar piece of legislation called the Dream Act, which was introduced in 2001 and would have given its beneficiaries a path to American citizenship. They now fall between the ages of 16 and 35; the vast majority came from Mexico, though many others were born in Central and South America, Asia and the Caribbean. The status has been issued to roughly 800,000 people.
Despite the contempt from a loud minority, DACA recipients are not threats to public safety or national security; to the contrary, they must have a nearly spotless record to be eligible in the first place. They do not receive legal status in this country, only a two-year, renewable deferral of deportation along with a work permit and eligibility for other government benefits down the road. And they are not taking jobs from native-born Americans, whose declining levels of employment can be chalked up to other factors. The ability to work has also allowed them to pay for school, pursue higher education and, in some states, drive legally. The program also opened up access to in-state tuition and state-funded grants and loans in some states. And depending on where they live, recipients can also qualify for state-subsidized health care.
Republicans who oppose supporting DACA appears to have shifted away from Ronald Reagan’s vision of the standard John Winthrop set before arriving at Plymouth Rock. That “the shining city…if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
The consensus from our fellow Americans and advocates are clear, DACA is morally right, legally sound and fiscally smart policy.