Why ending DACA is so unprecedented

Swim19 · 09-06-2017, 01:28 PM

Long, but interesting read:

Quote:

There’s never really been a time when a generation of people, raised and rooted in the United States, has been stripped of official recognition and pushed back into the precarity of unauthorized-immigrant life.

Even though DACA never officially legalized anyone, ending it would be, in a way, the biggest “illegalization” of immigrants in American history.

As a policy matter, it's straightforward: Ending DACA is unprecedented because DACA itself was more or less unprecedented. Never in US history had the government offered protection to so many people who didn't have (and weren't subsequently given) the opportunity to get full legal status from there.

The government has a lot of power to shape immigrants’ lives — but it’s never had perfect control over who immigrates to begin with. The history of immigrants who received DACA protections is unique, and the legal status to legitimize or delegitimize them is too.Often as not, when politicians try to reconcile law and reality, the result is that the law gets changed to bend to the reality — not that the reality is changed by enforcing or changing the law.
DACA was one such attempt. If Congress and the White House can’t agree on a bill within a six-month timeframe, and the Trump administration rescinds DACA, the US will be in wholly uncharted territory.

Undoing DACA would widen the gulf between reality and law. And that gulf is, in some ways, broader than it’s ever been before. What truly makes the end of DACA unprecedented, in the broad sweep of US history, is the size of that gap between the law and the reality.

With DACA hanging in the balance, America has a group of people on the verge of being socially integrated, but legally isolated — socially championed, but legally victimized — in a way we’ve never really seen before.

The choice between reconciling the law with the reality and creating an unprecedented chasm between the two lies with Congress and the White House. The stakes could not be higher.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...6/daca-history

SurfyB · 09-06-2017, 01:30 PM

lol I read fox.com and I was like no way people at Fox can write this good..

BeeHive · 09-06-2017, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SurfyB

lol I read fox.com and I was like no way people at Fox can write this good..

Why not?

Demise · 09-06-2017, 01:33 PM

"As a policy matter, it's straightforward: Ending DACA is unprecedented because DACA itself was more or less unprecedented. Never in US history had the government offered protection to so many people who didn't have (and weren't subsequently given) the opportunity to get full legal status from there."

Everyone forgot about the "Family Fairness" program that covered families of the 1986 amnesty applicants that were not eligible on their own. That program continued for almost 4 years until it was codified in 1990 law as "Family Unity".

That was the first blanket use of deferred action.

Swim19 · 09-06-2017, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Demise

"As a policy matter, it's straightforward: Ending DACA is unprecedented because DACA itself was more or less unprecedented. Never in US history had the government offered protection to so many people who didn't have (and weren't subsequently given) the opportunity to get full legal status from there."

Everyone forgot about the "Family Fairness" program that covered families of the 1986 amnesty applicants that were not eligible on their own. That program continued for almost 4 years until it was codified in 1990 law as "Family Unity".

That was the first blanket use of deferred action.

Interesting. I heard about 'Family Unity' for that 1986 amnesty, but I didn't know it started after a 'deferred action' for several years.

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Why ending DACA is so unprecedented