Thread: Is Trump Going to Cancel DACA or Not?

Is Trump Going to Cancel DACA or Not?
By Mark Krikorian, January 23, 2017

Politicians will always disappoint you. Rich Lowry at National Review tells the story of how, during the few hours he was considering a run for New York City mayor, he found himself already starting to waffle on principle to a potential voter in the elevator. If I were ever so unwise as to run for office, I too would no doubt disappoint those who unwisely voted for me.

So I was fully prepared for the Trump administration to do some things I wouldn't be happy with. But I expected the problems to arise in the area of foreign-worker visas; the president, while running for the nomination, made frequent statements in support of importing foreign workers on visas. (See here and here and here.)

What I did not expect was for Trump to break an explicit promise regarding his headline issue on the administration's first business day in office. But that may be what's happened.

Point Number Five in Trump's August Phoenix immigration speech was not ambiguous: "We will immediately terminate President Obama's two illegal executive amnesties, in which he defied federal law and the constitution to give amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal immigrants." Those two illegal amnesties are DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – for illegals who came as kids, often called "Dreamers") and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents). Only DACA actually went into effect; DAPA is held up in the courts. So the number of illegals whom Obama was actually able to lawlessly amnesty – providing them with work permits, Social Security numbers, access to the EITC welfare program and state driver's licenses – was "only" about 750,000.

"Immediately terminating" the program wouldn't necessarily have required an executive order, at least not on Day One. Nor would it require rounding up and deporting the DACAs; ICE has enough to do trying to restart deportation of the drunk drivers and wife-beaters Obama let go to worry about DACAs who aren't involved in violent crimes.

But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which handles the two-year, renewable amnesty program, could easily have been instructed to suspend processing of DACA applications – both for renewals and first-time applicants – until further notice.

That hasn't happened, at least not yet. In response to an inquiry from me earlier today, USCIS spokesman Steve Blando e-mailed me the following: "We are still accepting/processing DACA requests under existing policy." He told Politico the same thing, verbatim. Politico also reported that "according to the most recent public statistics — from the third quarter of last year — an average of about 140 initial applications and 690 renewals were approved each calendar day.

"If that average holds up, it means that more than 800 illegal aliens received new or renewed work permits during the first business day of the Trump administration.

Despite the fact that suspending the DACA program would simply require a memo to USCIS, it's at least possible that this is a snafu; there wasn't much of a campaign infrastructure or a government-in-waiting, so the transition team had a heck of a time preparing for January 20. Maybe the memo to halt DACA is stuck in someone's in-box. The anti-enforcement Obama administration faced a comparable case of seemingly betrayal when in early 2009 ICE conducted a workplace raid without approval from Washington and arrested a bunch of illegals. The anti-borders crowd raised holy hell and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano pledged to get to the bottom of the scandal, with the result that the illegals were released and given work permits, and worksite raids pretty much ended for the next eight years.

On the other hand, it could be that the Priebus faction won out over the Bannon faction and there was a conscious decision to betray the immigration hawks who put Trump in the White House. Reince Priebus yesterday, and Sean Spicer today, hinted pretty strongly that the administration has decided to abandon its explicit commitment to halt DACA. Spicer said the administration's focus would be on "people who can do harm, or who have done harm, and have a criminal record." But this is a non sequitur. Ending DACA isn't about deporting the illegals covered by Obama's lawless decree; it's not even about canceling all their work permits. Rather, the program should be stopped, so no new or renewed work permits are issued, and the ones outstanding should simply be permitted to expire at their scheduled times. David Bier over at Cato did the math and here's his estimate of the timeline for expirations:


If the Trump administration just continues to issue work permits to illegal aliens as though the election never happened, not only is it an in-your-face betrayal, it also weakens congressional Republicans' bargaining position. I'm actually in favor of giving green cards to illegals who came as young children; here's my 2010 NR piece outlining a DREAM Act 2.0, which would trade amnesty for this modest but sympathetic share of the illegal population in exchange for nationwide E-Verify and an end to family chain migration and the visa lottery. The president himself suggested his openness to something like that last month, when he said "we're going to work something out" for the DREAMers. But Chuck Schumer isn't going to deal unless there's pressure, and the prospect of hundreds of DACAs losing their work permits each day that Schumer holds out is an important element of that pressure (unless McConnell just scraps the current 60-vote cloture rule, which he should). Without suspending the DACA program, what bargaining power does the administration have?Will Trump give work permits to another 800 illegal aliens tomorrow? Stay tuned.
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I don't really understand people like Krikorian, Beck and Levin giving Trump a hard time on DACA. The court has stopped the 2 amnesties Trump said he wanted to reverse day one. The one in effect is the DACA 2012 which expires in March according to this article:

https://www.cato.org/blog/how-daca-w...ine-expiration

Originally Posted by Judy

I don't really understand people like Krikorian, Beck and Levin giving Trump a hard time on DACA. The court has stopped the 2 amnesties Trump said he wanted to reverse day one. The one in effect is the DACA 2012 which expires in March according to this article:

https://www.cato.org/blog/how-daca-w...ine-expiration

I posted the following on another thread where you made a similar comment. The jest of the discussion was pretty much the same:

Oh my gosh. At times it's unnerving how you twist things to fit a false argument. Attempting to offer cover to Trump through a false narrative just isn't going to work in this instance. Of course Trump was talking about DACA 2012 when he said the plan was unconstitutional. He was also talking about DACA 2012 when he said he would immediately end the program. To obfuscate the issue by bringing up Obama's last failed attempt to expand the program is very disingenuous.

Based on the facts, it easy to understand why Krikorian, Beck, and Levin are giving him a hard time on this. As should we all, I fully support their position on this.

Keep your promise, Mr. President, end DACA now!

Yeah, your statement was wrong then, and it's even more wrong now.

Originally Posted by Judy

Yeah, your statement was wrong then, and it's even more wrong now.

Yep, you're right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

Yeah, pretty much.

For anyone on our team of people trying to stop illegal immigration to attack Trump over the DACA 2012 before he's decided how to handle it is not doing the cause any favors, because Trump is the first President since Dwight Eisenhower to want to do anything at all to stop illegal immigration into the US including deporting illegal aliens so while he's ending sanctuary cities to deport them, he's ending catch and release to deport them, he's making lists of groups using welfare to deport them, committing crimes of all kinds to deport them, visa-overstays to deport them, frauds to deport them, immigration status and document violators and frauds to deport them, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me to focus too much attention on this small group of DACA 12's when the vast majority of them are going to over-lap on the high priorities.

We can demand that he end it, I have no problem with that and agree with such a demand, but he's not letting US down in anyway by focusing his resources and priorities on the other 29 million illegal aliens first.

That's my opinion, and of course I think I'm right, otherwise I wouldn't express it.

All I'm doing is asking President Donald Trump to keep his promise! IMO, you and everyone here at ALIPAC should be doing the same thing. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If enough people keep pushing him, maybe he'll listen.

Keep your promise, Mr. President, end DACA now!

Everyone including myself is doing that, MW. But in my opinion, your type of squeaking is tp the LEFT so they can get on the news, rile up the illegals, make their alternative moves, and make the task much harder than it would otherwise be. Trump has shut the DREAMER thing down. Not a negative word about it on the news since yesterday afternoon.

It would be nice if you don't mind my saying so to stop chattering for the enemy and work quickly and quietly with our new President to get the biggest early results as quickly as possible. The DACA 2012 as it actually is, is a straw man. See it for what it really is, small potatoes in the larger scheme of removing all illegal aliens quickly and quietly from the United States. The program expires next month. More than half of all DACA 2012's work permits expire within a year, the rest expire by March 2019. Their work permits don't protect them from deportation, it doesn't change their legal status, if they came here on a visa and overstayed, they're out, if they lied on their application, they're out, if they've committed crimes and misdemeanors, they're out, if they're using welfare, they're out, if they run into ICE while visiting other illegal alien friends or family, they're out. And obviously as soon as their work permit expires, 38% this year, and another 60% in 2018 and about 40,000 by March of 2019, anyone still left here is out. Then it's all over.

Originally Posted by Judy

Everyone including myself is doing that, MW. But in my opinion, your type of squeaking is tp the LEFT so they can get on the news, rile up the illegals, make their alternative moves, and make the task much harder than it would otherwise be. Trump has shut the DREAMER thing down. Not a negative word about it on the news since yesterday afternoon.

It would be nice if you don't mind my saying so to stop chattering for the enemy and work quickly and quietly with our new President to get the biggest early results as quickly as possible. The DACA 2012 as it actually is, is a straw man. See it for what it really is, small potatoes in the larger scheme of removing all illegal aliens quickly and quietly from the United States. The program expires next month. More than half of all DACA 2012's work permits expire within a year, the rest expire by March 2019. Their work permits don't protect them from deportation, it doesn't change their legal status, if they came here on a visa and overstayed, they're out, if they lied on their application, they're out, if they've committed crimes and misdemeanors, they're out, if they're using welfare, they're out, if they run into ICE while visiting other illegal alien friends or family, they're out. And obviously as soon as their work permit expires, 38% this year, and another 60% in 2018 and about 40,000 by March of 2019, anyone still left here is out. Then it's all over.

You're dead wrong. DACA is not a straw man issue. To attempt to lessen its importance is not the way to go on this very important issue. I fully expect to see a new Dreamers Act bill pop in the U.S. Congress in the near future. We need to be setting our opposition groundwork right now, not wait it out as you would have us do.

You can bet the Dreamers and their supporters are busy preparing for the fight that's about to take place. Heck, I see them crying, praying, and whining all the time in network news media, printed press and social media. Would you leave them alone to make their argument while we sit here like a bunch of crickets? Sorry, Judy, that is not the way we're going to win this battle. It's imperative that we stay on our President and elected representatives on this very important issue.

I have no problem with opposition groundwork. Besides attacking Trump and feeding the Left Frenzy that's trying to impeach him, what are your plans? Why aren't you attacking the sponsors of those bills?