National Review Online
Friday, June 16, 2017
The Trump administration has officially rescinded
President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent
Residents, or DAPA. Good riddance.
In late 2014, frustrated by congressional inaction and
having gotten away with one unlawful amnesty — its 2012 Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which effectively shielded more than 2 million
young illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. from deportation and provided
them work permits — the Obama administration went for broke: DAPA aimed to
grant effective amnesty to another 4 million people. Thankfully, the executive
order never went into effect, because of a lawsuit by 26 states and an
injunction ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court last year. Since then, the
lawsuit has been working its way back through the lower courts, this time for
litigation on its merits.
About the merits, or lack thereof, there can be little
doubt. President Obama’s justifications for his orders were always laughable:
There is no Congressional Inaction Clause in the Constitution under which the
president can unilaterally enact laws that the Congress won’t, and this was
never an act of “prosecutorial discretion”; these were attempts to waive the
immigration laws for broad categories of people, and that’s precisely how
immigration officials interpreted them.
Alas, the Trump administration’s announcement is hardly
unmitigated good news. The reasons for reversing DAPA are also reasons for
reversing DACA, but the administration apparently has no plans to end that
program, or even to curtail it. The Department of Homeland Security is
continuing to grant new work permits to applicants, despite the president’s
promise during the campaign that he would “immediately terminate” DACA, since
it was in violation of federal law. The president is now, by his own measure,
carrying out a lawless program. DHS Secretary Kelly’s refusal to acknowledge
that DAPA exceeded the power of the executive branch suddenly makes some sense;
doing so would have de facto tied the administration’s hands on DACA.
A lawful, humane approach to the problem of young people
brought to the U.S. not of their own volition is possible, though; but it
requires an intentional approach to the issue. Candidate Donald Trump was
correct that DACA is a lawless remedy. He should wind down that program by
withholding new permits and only granting renewals, refusing to implicate
himself further in its lawlessness. The Republican Congress, meanwhile, could
draft a bill offering DREAMers legal status that can be exchanged for mandatory
E-Verify and the RAISE Act — a bill sponsored by Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.)
and David Perdue (R., Ga.) that among other things would lower
legal-immigration levels by reforming our overbroad chain-migration laws. As we
have suggested before, this is a situation where both Democrats and Republicans
can get something they want.
President Trump proposed a dramatic, much-needed
reorientation of the nation’s immigration policy during last year’s election —
one that focused on making the country’s immigration process prioritize
American interests, and on reversing the Obama administration’s lawlessness.
The White House should not lose that focus.
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