He used the aggrieved language of anti-immigrant activists
Trump went ahead with ending DACA, of course – because if there’s a mean thing to do and Trump has the choice, he’ll do it.
President Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to the Obama-era executive action that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, calling the program an “amnesty-first approach” and urging Congress to replace it with legislation before it begins phasing out on March 5, 2018.
“I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents,” Mr. Trump said in a written statement. “But we must also recognize that we are nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”
The statement was released shortly after Mr. Trump, who had called the issue a personal dilemma, dispatched Attorney General Jeff Sessions to announce that the government will no longer accept new applications from undocumented immigrants to shield them from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.
Administration officials said the roughly 800,000 current beneficiaries of the program — brought to the United States illegally as children — will not be immediately affected by what they called an “orderly wind-down” of former President Barack Obama’s policy.
Did any dogs hear whistling? Oh yes.
Mr. Sessions called the Obama-era policy an “open-ended circumvention of immigration laws” and an unconstitutional use of executive authority. “The executive branch through DACA deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions,” he said.
He also used the aggrieved language of anti-immigrant activists who argue that undocumented people are lawbreakers who hurt native-born Americans by usurping their jobs and pushing down wages.
“The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of minors at the southern border with humanitarian consequences,” Mr. Sessions said. “It denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”
Those sought-after jobs picking strawberries or gutting chickens.
Well, if it’s true that some large fraction of Republicans are against ending DACA, then there should be no problem getting a bi-partisan bill together to normalize these people’s immigration status, right? Or would it piss off their constituents too much, if they explicitly took a pro-immigrant stand, instead of just privately accepting the result of DACA, while publicly complaining about Obama?
This does smack of simply another poke at Obama by removing every trace of his legacy, whether they agree with the result or not.
At this point, if a squirrel were found collecting nuts for a cause that was ostensibly connected to something Obama did Trump would want to have it poisoned. No bearing whatsoever on minimizing suffering for anyone at anytime in the history of the universe. Like religion, this will be Trump’s legacy: poisoning everything.