After DACA: Questions linger about impact and what Congress will do

Congress now has six months to decide a new policy -- should it opt to -- that would allow more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain in this country as eligible workers.

President Donald Trump, after much hemming and hawing and under pressure from the farthest-Right quadrant of his party, announced through Attorney General Jeff Sessions Tuesday that DACA -- the Obama-era legislation known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and which permitted the so-called Dreamers to stay in the U.S. under two-year, renewable work permits -- is being rescinded.

The declaration fulfills a campaign promise some Republicans had threatened to sue Trump over had he not followed through on it.

That said, the six-month "stay of execution" so to speak, leaves open the opportunity for those with expiring work permits to apply for renewal, but after that all renewals will be halted.

What comes next is anybody's guess, as is what all of this might mean for Wayne County, which has for years seen a growing population of immigrants, mostly Hispanic and mostly from Mexico and Central American nations.

We are looking into how the shift away from DACA will affect the local economy and some of the people who live here. But in the meantime it is worth noting that Trump has not simply dismissed nearly one million people from the country as some media reports have made it sound. He has instead taken a piece of legislation many view as unconstitutional and which unfairly rewards those -- the parents of the Dreamers -- who knowingly broke the law, and given it an expiration date.

Again, Congress still has the opportunity to find a legal and moral means of dealing with the exorbitant amount of illegal immigrants in the country. And while we don't agree with all of the reasons attributed to Trump's decision and proposed laws like Texas' HB4 which many argue legalizes racial profiling, or the idea that immigrant populations are largely comprised of criminals, we do believe immigration laws exist for a reason and ought to be adhered to.

Hopefully any new legislation Congress can come up with will serve both purposes -- keep the Dreamers who are hard workers and law abiding citizens here, legally, and better enforce the penalties and deterring factors to help reduce the numbers of those who are not.

Published in Editorials on September 5, 2017 7:52 PM