Patterico's Pontifications

9/4/2017

Trump’s Rumored DACA Abolition Is the Right Thing to Do and the Right Way to Do It

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:02 pm



streiff covered the POLITICO story earlier about Trump’s rumored abolition of DACA. Stories based on anonymous sources are worth nothing without corroboration — but if the rumors are true, Trump is finally acting correctly here, and we should say so.

DACA was an unconstitutional move by President Obama. He caused this problem because he issued an imperial order that had no basis in our Constitution, and could be reversed by any future president. Our Constitution gives primary authority over immigration to Congress, not the President. Obama had no business announcing and implementing this policy. Congressional Republicans were right to challenge it in court, and Jeff Sessions should not be defending a policy he rightly believes is a violation of the separation of powers.

However, Trump is also right to give Congress time for a legislative fix. The issue is a thorny one.

On one hand, people who came here as children are not wrongdoers. Unlike people who deliberately cross the border as adults, children cannot make such a decision, and there is a moral issue involved with punishing them for a situation they did not knowingly cause. For many “DREAMers” this country is all they have ever known.

But that’s not the only policy issue. I’m old enough to remember the summer of 2014, when there was a humanitarian crisis at the Texas border — a scene of utter chaos caused by the announcement of Obama’s DACA program. That summer, the DACA policy was widely if incorrectly interpreted in Central America as providing a “get in the U.S. for free” card, to be claimed by anyone who made it into the country by the end of June 2014. Unintended consequences like this are always going to happen whenever there is an amnesty, no matter how limited or targeted.

In the end, there will have to be trade-offs and judgment calls. The Constitution says Congress should be making these decisions. Trump is right to give them time to do so.

I doubt Trump is taking this action because he respects the Constitution. At Hot Air, Allahpundit says Trump is just looking to pass the buck, and that’s probably right. Trump does almost nothing for the right reasons.

That said, this is still the right call — if the anonymously sourced rumors are true.

We’ll see.

UPDATE: What a sucker I was to believe he meant it when he said he was abolishing DACA:

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]


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