Hi, Folks -

In the above posted video, Trump makes a point of saying DACA and Dreamers are not the same thing - so I went searching to see why he would be saying that.

Information from Wikipedia:

The DREAM Act (acronym for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) is an American legislative proposal for a process for granting residency status to qualifying foreign immigrants who entered the United States as minors. It would first grant conditional residency and, upon meeting further qualifications, permanent residency.

The bill was first introduced in the Senate on August 1, 2001, S. 1291 by United States Senators Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and has since been reintroduced several times but has failed to pass.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), on the other hand, is a policy put in place by Obama mid-2012 as an executive memorandum, and therefore Trump as president could reverse it.

Unlike the never-passed DREAM proposal, DACA does not provide a path to full citizenship but allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. To be eligible for the program, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records.

Plans to phase out DACA were announced by the Trump Administration on September 5, 2017; implementation was put on hold for six months to allow Congress time to pass the Dream Act or some other legislative protection for Dreamers. Congress failed to act and the time extension expired on March 5, 2018, but the phase-out of DACA has been put on hold by several courts.

On August 31, 2018, District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA is likely unconstitutional. However, he let the program remain in place as litigation proceeds.

So, a proper path forward with a decent regard for the welfare of folks who are illegally here today only because their parents or other adult relative brought them here illegally as minors requires either a broad executive amnesty or some legislative action by Congress.

By not reversing DACA immediately, Trump has placed responsibility for those being referred to as 'Dreamers' where it belongs - on Congress - and also has brought the matter into public awareness as an Obama-related constitutional issue.

--hobie

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