Editorial: Ten years of limbo. DACA recipients need permanent relief now
(NEWSER) – “We’re living in a time when we can’t deport anyone,” a GOP congressman said in a statement about the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
But it’s not just Republicans who are against the Obama-era program, which President Obama said in 2013 would end in six months in a “clean” DACA reform plan, the Washington Post reports.
In 2010, the same year DACA was created, Obama signed the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which, according to the Post, would have allowed a parent of a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to request a temporary stay of deportation. That year, the White House said the policy would be in effect until 2015. The White House also announced the program that year would end in 2012.
“It was a program that Congress passed in 2010 and Obama signed in 2010. It was in the budget, in the president’s budget, but it was never implemented. And, therefore, the program is alive and well today, and it’s still alive today,” said a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the New York Times writes.
The new plan “calls the Obama-era program ‘dead’ and would let DREAMers and their parents avoid the current policy of deportation,” the Times reports. “The White House wants the plan to include the option of accepting any child with a parent or legal guardian of a legal permanent resident who also has worked in the U.S. for at least five years to apply for deferred action.”
And Reid’s spokesman said the new plan would not necessarily apply to all “DREAMers.”
This story has already created a ton of controversy, most recently when some Democrats in Congress are demanding a DACA fix. “The program has already been an important vehicle for reform, but it needs permanent and real security and certainty as a right without the uncertainty of what would happen if the program expires and some Dreamers leave the U.S. for another country,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
“The president’s executive actions, including DACA, can only prevent those who are determined to commit crimes from entering our country, not remove them from it.”
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