Homeland Security chief John Kelly told Democratic legislators that legal advisors say former President Barack Obama’s DACA amnesty will likely be wiped out by a pending lawsuit, and he urged them to pass an immigration reform to keep the amnesty alive.
That is huge news for immigration reformers because a legal wipeout of the 2012 “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” amnesty for younger illegal aliens would pressure Democrats to accept pro-American immigration reforms.
The reforms could include mandatory use of the E-verify system to block company hiring of illegals, a reduction to the annual inflow of 1 million legal immigrants and 1 million contract workers (such as the H-1B white-collar professionals), plus extra funding for the border wall. President Donald Trump has already sketched out plans for a “merit-based” reform that could help raise the productivity and income of Americans, especially the four million young Americans who join the labor market each year.
According to Politico:
Kelly told the lawmakers [on July 12] that although he personally supports DACA, he can’t guarantee that the administration would defend it in court. He also said that he’d consulted attorneys who told him the program wouldn’t survive a legal challenge.
“It’s not a pretty picture,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who attended the meeting, told reporters. “The legal authorities that he’s spoken to suggest that DACA cannot be sustained legally. We have a different view.”
The secretary declined to take questions after the meeting, but a department spokesperson confirmed accounts from lawmakers…
“It’s not a pretty picture,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who attended the meeting, told reporters. “The legal authorities that he’s spoken to suggest that DACA cannot be sustained legally. We have a different view.”
Rep. Michelle Luján Grisham, who chairs the Hispanic caucus, urged Kelly to support the amnesty from the pending lawsuit. “We believe there is sufficient legal discretion in the current law to allow to continue to protect DACA and Dreamers, we believe that it would be much stronger if the department would say publicly and take a position, which is their job, if that’s what they’re saying to us,” she said, according to TheHill.com.
Pro-amnesty Democrats reacted with alarm to the possible repatriation of the so-called young “Dreamer” migrants. A statement from Rep. Luis Gutierrez declared:
Kelly was basically telling us DACA is facing a death sentence. They actually want to take millions of people who are documented – with our own government – make them undocumented, and then go after them and their families… Sec. Kelly says it is up to Congress, but his party is the obstacle standing in the way of a modern immigration system…
Trump, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions and Kelly want to take 800,000 DREAMers with DACA and hundreds of thousands with [temporary residency] who are registered with the government and in compliance with the law and make them into criminals, felons, and deportees in the next few months. Anyone with a conscience who thinks legal immigration is an integral part of who we are as a country just got called to action.
The threat of deportation if Democrats don’t cut a deal was included in a Washington Post article, which reported:
“This is what he’s being told by different attorneys, that if it goes to court it might not survive,” DHS spokesman David Lapan said. If Congress does not pass a bill to protect the program, he added, “they’re leaving it in the hands of the courts to make a decision.”
White House officials are already touting their plans for a “merit-based” immigration reform led by pro-Americans Senators, Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. David Purdue. The bill would try to half the annual inflow of immigrants, so boosting wages for Americans.
Pro-American reformers said ending DACA can help the United States and immigrants’ home countries. “DACA represents the politics Americans are tired of,” said Dale Wilcox, Executive Director & General Counsel of the Immigration Reform Law Institute.” He added:
DACA-pushers missed their mark because the best thing for these “kids” isn’t to stay here and push down blue-collar wages, but to return to Latin American and reform it. Ending DACA will help them deal with what’s really the root of the problem: corruption south of the border.
The issue has become critical since a group of GOP Attorneys General announced last month that they would extend their successful Texas lawsuit which defeated Obama’s 2014 ‘DAPA’ amnesty to include the 2012 DACA amnesty. “We respectfully request that the Secretary of Homeland Security phase out the [2012] DACA program … Just like [the 2014] DAPA, DACA unilaterally confers eligibility for work authorization and lawful presence without any statutory authorization from Congress,” said a June 29 letter from the group to Kelly.
The group set a September 5 deadline for when they will extend their lawsuit to include the 2012 DACA amnesty, which has provided work permits and Social Security numbers to roughly 685,000 illegal immigrants who crossed the border as youths or children.
The group’s threat against DACA followed a mid-June decision by Kelly to quit the courtroom defense of Obama’s 2014 DAPA amnesty, which would have provided work permits to roughly 4.5 million parents of U.S. citizen children.
In his June letter announcing the end of DAPA, Kelly hinted that DACA could share the same fate as DAPA, saying “I remind our officers that (1) deferred action, as an act of prosecutorial discretion, may only be granted on a case-by-case basis, and (2) such a grant may be terminated at any time at the agency’s discretion.”
Many polls show that Americans are very generous, they do welcome individual immigrants, and they do want to like the idea of immigration. But the polls also show that most Americans are increasingly worried that large-scale legal immigration will change their country and disadvantage themselves and their children.
The current annual flood of foreign labor spikes profits and stock values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.