Some Thinkings...Maybe

Edited 9/5/17 to add:

Several news stories point out that Mr. Obama enacted the DACA policy as a temporary measure after several legislative attempts to get a similar policy were defeated in Congress. That sort of mitigates the hits he takes on relying on executive instead of legislative action, but not by much. Before Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away, the president's party enjoyed a supermajority in both houses of Congress. And in any event, it leaves the same problem on the table of trying to do with executive action something that is properly done by legislation.

President Trump announced today that he would end an Obama administration policy called DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Then-President Obama created the policy in June 2012 to allow illegally immigrating people who were brought to the country as children to receive a deferment from prosecution or possible deportation, and to obtain work permits. The thought process was that even though these people entered the country illegally, they may have done so as infants or young children and had grown up in the United States.

Trump will delay suspending the policy for six months to give Congress time to figure out a way to replace it or to create a policy enacted through legislation. Many people are unhappy with the president's choice.

A popular argument against suspending DACA made among my circle of friends and acquaintances is a religious one. There are several passages in the Old Testament in which the Israelites, now established as a nation after their time in the wilderness, are enjoined to care for people traveling through their land. Much as Jacob's family were cared for in Egypt during a time of famine, so are the Israelites to care for other wanderers. Most of the quotations I've seen generally seem to use the passages correctly, although it's amusing to see the sudden popularity of Leviticus-based legislation among folks who usually don't have much use for its regulations regarding, say, same-sex relationships.

Even so, that argument doesn't convince me. I very much want to see my nation's culture and society reflect Biblical ideas about the worth of persons and how we treat each other, but I balk at the idea of wholesale conversion of such ideas into laws. The problem with a government that tries to draw its legal codes and structure from a religion is that before long it will want the influence to be a two-way street. I am not keen on the people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles also running my church.

One friend posted a Facebook status that said "Letting him (Trump) end DACA is evil and cruel." And here we come to the rocks on which DACA founders.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that people brought illegally over the border in their parents' arms are now, years later, more American than they are anything else. I'm also sympathetic to the idea that people shouldn't pay for other people's crimes. I haven't studied immigration policy nearly closely enough to know the best policy solution for this issue, or what laws should be enacted to carry it out.

But I am sure that whatever solution is created should come from enacted legislation rather than presidential fiat, and that's the problem with DACA as it exists now. A president created it, and a president who thinks differently can end it. Many people point out that ending the policy will expose almost 800,000 people to imprisonment or deportation, but the reason they are so exposed when they had thought themselves safe was that the person who "saved" them didn't, or at least he didn't finish the job.

In our government, the president is charged with executing the laws of our nation. Congress passes those laws. Mr. Obama used his authority to decide not to enforce certain immigration laws against a specific set of people -- children brought here illegally who are now grown. They were thus safe from prosecution while he was president, and would have remained so until a successor decided to enforce those laws. Which is what we have happening now.

My friend may or may not be right that ending DACA is evil and cruel, but because DACA came into being as a presidential whim it can depart in the same way. Mr. Obama probably was and is concerned with how the people affected by DACA are treated and about the problems their situations create for them. But he was not concerned enough to try to get a law enacted that would have made that concern outlast his term. You might say that the timing of the DACA policy, five months before a presidential election, means that it was at its core a cynical grab at Hispanic voters. This would make you more cynical than me, but not very much, because I'm pretty sure that possibility motivated some of the folks in the White House even if not Mr. Obama himself.

Whatever the cause, though, the reality is that from January 20, 2009 to January 5, 2011, Mr. Obama's party controlled the White House and both branches of Congress. Had something like DACA been a high priority, it could have been made into law at any time during those two years. Persons now upset by the end of DACA may blame Mr. Trump for ending it, but they should also blame Mr. Obama for half-assing it in the first place and giving the current president the opening.