So, now we’re left to hope that Congress — the outfit that couldn’t come up with a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — is supposed to find a legislative answer for undocumented immigrants who came here as children.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Differed Action for Children Arrivals is being rescinded in six months. Congress has a chance, then, to enact a law that gives DACA residents a fighting chance at avoiding deportation to countries they didn’t know. Why is that? Because they have lived their lives as Americans. They came here as children when their parents sneaked into the country.
Donald J. Trump now wants to punish those individuals for the sins of their parents.
Sessions said today that President Obama’s executive order establishing the DACA program is “unconstitutional.”
If that’s the case — and it’s debatable, of course — then Congress has the chance to make it right for those who have lived as de facto Americans. Their “home country” is the United States of America.
Will Congress deliver the goods in six months? Lawmakers’ track record pretty much stinks to high heaven. They had seven years to come up with a suitable replacement for the ACA. Trump got elected president as a Republican, giving the GOP complete control of the legislative and executive government branches. They choked, failed, sputtered, face-planted on ACA repeal and replacement.
Oh, and the president failed miserably, too. Let’s not forget that he’s the GOP’s leader now.
We have about 800,000 U.S. residents facing potential deportation to places they do not know. The president once again has played solely to his political base. The rest of us be damned!
Get to work, Congress.