Finding a Lasting Solution for Dreamers
As someone who was born in Connecticut to a financially stable family that has already settled in the United States for a few generations, I have automatically been given the full opportunity to pursue the “American Dream”. All thanks to the gift of birthright citizenship, I will one day have the right to vote, attend college, work in the United States, and receive countless other benefits that are essential to eventually living happily and successfully.
Dreamers, unfortunately, are not as lucky as I am to be entitled to all the opportunities that arguably the greatest nation on Earth has to offer solely from having won the arbitrary lottery of being born in the United States. These “Dreamers” are people, typically from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, who arrived in the United States before the age of 16 and do not have legal immigrant status. In August 2001, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, commonly known as the DREAM Act, was introduced into Congress to help those under these unfortunate circumstances gain conditional legal residency as a temporary protection against deportation and later have the opportunity to qualify for permanent legal residency. This piece of bipartisan legislation, however, has since failed numerous times to pass through Congress on the path to becoming a law despite the federal government’s general desire to extend benefits and protection under the law to Dreamers.
In June 2012, in response to the miscarried legislation, then-President Barack Obama enacted an immigration policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) via an executive order. This program immediately took great steps to extend legal status to Dreamers by offering renewable protection against deportation as well as certain benefits such as work permits, driver’s licenses, and the opportunity to pursue higher education with a possibility of financial aid. Those who are eligible for DACA must have arrived in the country before age 16 and have since graduated high school and lived in the United States continuously for at least 5 years.
Following the announcement made on September 5, 2017 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions of the Trump administration’s intentions of bringing DACA to an end, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson said in a statement to MPR News, “government’s rescission of DACA violates the promises made to these young people — 97 percent of whom are in school or in the workforce — who have relied on the law to make important decisions about their lives” (MPR News).
In the eyes of Swanson and many other Americans, DACA is more than a policy of government protection and benefits. It is a promise. As a nation that readily and cheerfully welcomes refugees from foreign lands with open arms, it is our ethical responsibility to protect these blameless Dreamers under the law and treat them as if they are our equal American brethren. And who can blame them for believing this? To them, DACA is a crucial program that many Dreamers depend on in order to live their lives without constant fear of deportation back to their nation of birth that they can hardly call their own.
However, opponents of DACA contend that the program initiated by an executive order was outside the authority of the federal executive branch outlined in the US Constitution. Again, in a response to the Trump administration’s plan of terminating DACA, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said, “However well-intentioned, President Obama’s DACA program was a clear abuse of executive authority, an attempt to create a law out of thin air. Congress writes laws, not the President, and ending this program fulfills a promise that President Trump made to restore the proper role of the executive and legislative branches” (Speaker Paul Ryan).
While we can sit and argue about whether or not Obama had the technical legal authority to implement DACA through an executive order, it remains a federal law regardless. However, we must recognize that the policy has failed to meet the constitutional responsibility of the federal executive branch to enforce laws, which is imperative for maintaining a strong, secure nation that can best serve its people. Historically, the significance of law enforcement can be seen in our nation’s early years under the Articles of Confederation. Without the power to enforce tax collection, our weak federal government was unable to fund a military that could uphold the national security of the United States. Devoid of provisions to reduce illegal immigration in the future, DACA similarly threatens national security by providing a clear procedure for foreigners to bypass immigration laws unscathed. Inability to enforce existing immigration laws means we cannot resolve the issue of illegal immigration that has put around 800,000 Dreamers in their unfortunate situation to begin with. As a result, DACA in its current form in the absence of law enforcement cannot be considered a viable long-term solution to address the legal status of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
Now the question is: How do we appropriately enforce immigration laws? We know that doing so is completely necessary to attack the heart of the issue that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Dreamers living in the United States. The simple answer is that we must demonstrate through our actions a clear difference between being a Dreamer and being a criminal. Such actions in particular require us to “curb sanctuary cities, expedite removals of illegal immigrants caught at US borders, and streamline the removal process” (The Heritage Foundation). By showing intolerance towards criminals who knowingly enter the United States illegally, we are showing that amnesty legislation is strictly a privilege for Dreamers while also sympathizing with their unique hardship.
It is obvious that to prevent illegal immigration in the future we must ensure that foreigners seeking refuge in the United States obey our immigration laws, but this requires more than strict administration. Besides the possibility of amnesty from DACA, inconvenient obstacles that are currently present in the legal immigration process contribute to the appeal of choosing illegal immigration. In general, reasons for immigration are limited to employment, family reunification, and humanitarian protection, all of which are curbed by rigorous numerical and eligibility requirements. According to the American Immigration Council, even those who are eligible must often wait upwards of five years to immigrate to the United States legally because no single country may account for 7% of visas distributed in a single year. Reforming these particular regulations will yield an incentive for prospective immigrants to choose the legal path to residency in the United States and thus future demand for government programs to provide asylum to illegal aliens will diminish. In this way, finding a long-term solution for Dreamers means transforming illegal immigration into a temporary issue.
Ultimately, we, as a nation, are presented with a unique challenge: How do we fulfill our ethical responsibility of protecting the interests of Dreamers, who arrived in our nation by no fault of their own, while also protecting our own national security interests? By enforcing existing immigration laws, children of families from foreign countries will be prevented from entering the United States illegally before they can even become reliant on government protection and benefits. On top of this, I believe that amnesty must be established as a privilege for Dreamers who deserve it, not for criminals. Reforms must also be instituted that make the legal process of immigration more appealing to adults who would normally opt to sidestep the law altogether. Dreamers, in all aspects except their location of birth, are Americans. With the establishment of norms that encourage lawful practices, we can one day successfully support the wellbeing of Dreamers while supporting the wellbeing of our nation.