Blog#7- 11/14/19
DO THEY CARE?
By Richard Davis
It is possible that the Supreme Court may be poised to enable the Trump administration to decrease the U.S. population by 700,000 people and, in the process, ruin the lives of all of those Americans and their families.
The 700,000 are young people who were brought to this country at an early age by parents who were not American citizens. These innocents have been considered to be here illegally. President Obama realized the difficult situation these young people were in and in 2012 he established a policy labelled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that is referred to as DACA.
DACA allows these children of immigrants to legally remain in the U.S. if they meet certain criteria and pass a background check. When DACA was established those children were able to stop living in fear.
DACA recipients have been referred to as Dreamers because they were given hope for a better life and they were able to fulfill the dreams they had as Americans without fear of deportation.
Trump has always used these DACA children as pawns in his Nazi-like race-baiting xenophobia in an effort to appeal to his racist, anti-immigration base. His latest ploy has been to label the Obama DACA program illegal and unconstitutional. The Trump administration lost appeals to federal courts when they tried to say that DACA was illegal and unconstitutional.
According to a November 12 National Public Radio report by Nina Totenberg, “Three federal appeals courts disagreed (with the Trump case relating to DACA) and ruled that when an administration revokes a policy like this, on which so many people, businesses and even the U.S. economy have relied, the administration must provide a fully supported rationale that weighs the pros and cons of the program, the costs and the benefits. Faced with those lower court decisions, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which seemed Tuesday to be on the verge of a contrary decision.”
Totenberg also noted that, “…when the lawyers representing the DACA plaintiffs rose to argue, they got a fusillade of doubt from the conservative wing of the court. Chief Justice John Roberts sought to minimize the number of immigrants covered by previous programs similar to DACA, dating to the 1950s. Other members of the conservative majority fired different rounds.”
Is the Supreme Court and the Trump administration preparing to deport 700,000 young Americans who have established solid roots in this country, most of whom have become productive members of American society? This is yet another sad day for America.
The government has identifying information about all DACA recipients. This could mean that the next phase of DACA elimination, after a go-ahead from the Supreme Court, could be the biggest roundup of newly branded criminals to be deported back to the country their parents came from.
Has the Supreme Court or anyone associated with America’s version of Hitler and Stalin in one package even thought about the implications of striking down DACA? Have they considered how much a decision like this will tear apart the foundation of American democracy? Do they even care if they ruin so many people’s lives?
