DACA and Hollow Words

So you’re a young kid graduating high school in California, Texas or here in Florida living the dream.  You have friends, a social life, speak American English, stand for the anthem, salute the flag, love your mother and your country.

Perhaps you’ve decided to attend college, study engineering or medicine.   Or perhaps you’ve decided you want to join the Marines or be a cop or a  carpenter.  You’re a good kid with no criminal record, looking forward only to the pursuit of happiness.

But now you have a problem.

You see, the mother you love so dearly walked, hitched rides or paid smugglers to get herself and 2 year old you from Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala or Mexico or where ever it is that you were born  across the Rio Grand to Texas and then on to California, Florida, New Mexico or where ever it is that you have grown up into a responsible adult.

And now, suddenly you face deportation to a place you’ve never known and don’t fit in to pay for the sins of your mother who brought you here dreaming that some day you would have a better life than she has had.  Many of them are thoroughly American kids who are no more Mexican, Nicaraguan or Honduran than I am Italian.

Now all of this is nothing new.  After the Obama Administration worked with the Republican Congress for months on an immigration reform bill it all proved to be fruitless when the leadership refused to even bring the bill to a vote.

Obama then drafted and signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – DACA for short – as a Executive Order.  The GOP enraged at the action, immediately termed the order “illegal” but it withstood the initial legal challenges.  Trump vowed during his campaign to rescind it to his cheering supporters of Wall Builders.

And now he’s done it.

The DACA program required these young adults to come out of the shadows, declare themselves as undocumented. submit to a criminal background check and pay a fine.  In return they were granted work permits for two years which gave them legal status for that time period.  They could now legally obtain driver’s licenses,  get jobs, go to college, serve in the military, pay taxes.

It was expected that eventually a more permanent solution would become reality through immigration reform.  In the meanwhile, those in the program could obtain extensions for two years at a time provided they were working, in school or in the military and had committed no crimes.

Unfortunately no permanent solution has been reached and the President has given the program six months to live after which time work permits will begin to expire making the holder subject o deportation.  Thirteen states sued yesterday to overturn the Trump decision noting that it was a violation of the due process clause in that it used information obtained by the government directly from the undocumented person essentially under false pretenses.

Trump kept his promise to his supporters and threw the ball to the GOP Congress basically saying “You fix it!, knowing full well most of the GOP districts have few if any Latino voters living within them, the segment living in already heavily Democratic districts.

So now some 800,000 undocumented kids have been handed a future of doubt, having committed no crime themselves and done everything which they were asked to do.

Congress of course can fix this.  GOP members insist it be attached to something they can sell to their right-wing supporters – i.e. – funding for the border wall which Mexico was going to pay for.  Dems oppose this approach in principle and want a clean DACA bill with no other interests attached and if they don’t get one they are prepared to adopt the Republican tactic of attaching it to every piece of legislation that Republicans really want – i.e. -tax reform.

And so it goes.

Oh my country!  When was it that we became cruel, mean, intolerant and unfeeling – except of course for us and people like us?  When did we cease setting the examples that the world envied and wished to follow and begin destroying the legacy of greater men who have gone before?  When did the light beside the Golden Door go out?

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand
glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus

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