The role that immigration—both legal and illegal—plays in the U.S. economy, and what should be done about border security, are hotly contested topics. Inseparable from this problem is the question of what to do with the 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the country.
In 2012, President Obama created the DACA program via executive action to allow American residents who entered the country illegally as children to receive temporary protection from deportation, work permits, and an incentive to invest in their own human capital.
The program only applies to those who have lived in the United States for five years or longer and do not have a criminal record. Essentially, these are people who never knowingly broke any law and have been productive and peaceful members of society since their arrival.
The logic of the Obama Administration in creating DACA is that it makes little sense to expend time and resources trying to track down, arrest, and deport these people when they have not committed any crime save for being unwittingly brought across the border by as children.
Many Americans believe that the presence of unauthorized immigrants is harmful to the economy and would like to see steps taken to reduce their presence. However, a repeal or roll-back of DACA would harm the economy and cost the U.S. government a significant amount of lost tax revenue.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump claimed that he would cancel the DACA program. Then, after the election, President Trump promised to “work something out” with the Dreamers. In January, to many people’s surprise, President Trump decided to maintain the program, issue renewals, and even allow new applicants into the program. In July, President Trump said that he alone will decide the future of DACA.
Unfortunately, the politics just became much more difficult.…
News of individual DREAMers committing crimes contributed to the public perception that DREAMers are disproportionately crime prone and may influence President Trump’s decision to cancel or continue DACA.
However, DREAMers have lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans of the same age and education level. In fact, the native-born incarceration rate is 14% higher than the DREAMer incarceration rate. DACA-ineligible illegal immigrants and all other legal immigrants are even less likely to be incarcerated. The incarceration rate for DREAMers is closer to that of native-born Americans because they came here at a younger age and are more assimilated into American culture.
Despite this, several states — led by Texas — are attempting to force the president’s hand, requesting in a letter that he terminate the program by September 5 or face a lawsuit. Texas already successfully challenged President Obama’s 2014 attempt to expand DACA to a broader range of immigrants who came here as children and to create a new program for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens called DAPA. This makes a lawsuit very likely to succeed.
In other words, Texas has essentially forced President Trump to defend in court something that he had characterized as illegal amnesty on the campaign trail and something his biggest supporters hate. Moreover, Trump’s record with the courts is already making him appear inept, so he would likely not want to take the political hits when he could easily lose the case anyway.
Even if it were possible for the Trump administration to defend DACA legally, it is not clear that Attorney General Jeff Sessions would want to defend a policy that he has called constitutionally “very questionable.” In July, he refused to say he would defend it.
If the president does rescind the DACA memorandum on September 5, the program will likely not disappear overnight. Rather, it will slowly wind down over the next two years.