New York Times reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis filed the paper’s latest passionate defense of an amnesty plan for young (and not-so-young) illegals -- Deferred Action for Child Arrivals, or DACA -- in Saturday's edition. Warning that Trump risked appearing "particularly hardhearted," (even more than usual?) Davis shamelessly used Hurricane Harvey as a political weapon to prop up the initiative put in place by President Obama in 2012, after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act, in “Storm Complicates a Decision on Whether to Keep ‘Dreamers’ Program.”
(It comes on the heels of Monday’s lead national section story, “Program That Lifted 800,000 Immigrant ‘Dreamers’ Is at Risk.”)
Davis kept the pressure on Trump, belaboring his “agonies” and ambivalence over whether he will pull the plug on the program as if trying to appeal to his better (promise-breaking?) nature and shield the Obama amnesty intiative:
President Trump on Friday said he would announce a decision by Tuesday on whether he will end the Obama-era program that shields young undocumented immigrants from deportation, declaring, “We love the Dreamers” even as his White House grappled with how to wind down their legal status.
Mr. Trump has agonized publicly over the fate of immigrants who were brought to the United States without authorization as children, and who are now protected from deportation and allowed to work under the five-year-old program created by his predecessor.
In recent days, White House officials have recommended that the president end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which currently shields about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who would be subject to potential deportation to countries that many of them have not seen since birth.
....
As a candidate, Mr. Trump pledged to immediately terminate the program. But he has stalled for months, expressing anguish about a sympathetic group of undocumented immigrants he has called “incredible kids.” His hard-line advisers, however, have counseled that the program was illegal and must not be maintained.
Davis whispered warnings into the President’s ear:
Complicating the calculus for Mr. Trump has been the storm pummeling Texas, the state with the second-highest concentration of DACA recipients, after California. John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, has argued privately that the president can take his time on the decision, given that Mr. Paxton is unlikely to follow through on his threat in the short term, with parts of his state under water, two officials said.
And it is not lost on the president that ending the program now -- with many Dreamers directly impacted by Harvey -- would appear particularly hardhearted.
Asked Friday whether the Dreamers impacted by the storm in Texas and Louisiana were weighing on the president as he contemplated the fate of the program, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said: “The decision itself is weighing on him, certainly.”
....
As the White House struggled to get its rollout in place, pressure was building from a diverse coalition of supporters, including immigration advocacy groups, business executives and some elected Republican officials, for Mr. Trump to keep the program.
“I actually don’t think he should do that,” Speaker Paul D. Ryan said of ending DACA as he spoke to a radio station in his home state of Wisconsin. “I believe that this is something Congress has to fix.”
The Times, supposed riend of the working stiff, eagerly passed on support for DACA from big businessmen who love cheap labor:
Four hundred business leaders also released a letter on Friday urging Mr. Trump not to end the program. They argued that denying Dreamers work authorization could result in the loss of $460.3 billion from the United States economy and $24.6 billion in Social Security and Medicare tax contributions.
....
Pro-immigration activists argued it would be particularly callous for Mr. Trump to end the program as Texas is struggling to recover from Harvey.
....
Oscar Hernandez, a DACA recipient who is an organizer at United We Dream Houston, joined a conference call on Friday arranged by supporters of the program from the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston where he was helping families displaced by the storm, vowing, “We’re here to stay.”
There are no “illegals” at the Times, just “undocumented immigrants”: “In the community of young, undocumented immigrants, that sentiment was broadly felt.”
It was left to the conservative magazine National Review to point out the obvious, feelings and sentiments aside: DACA is unconstitutional. The magazine recommends Trump end the program “as a matter of fidelity to our constitutional system and his campaign promises.”
The magazine explained the constitutional issues that the Times totally skipped:
....DACA contravenes the elementary principle that the legislative branch ought to pass laws and the executive branch ought to enforce them. In 2012, after Congress rejected the DREAM Act, President Obama issued the policy by unilateral decree. Under DACA -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- illegal immigrants under the age of 37 can apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for deferred status. And while the Obama administration pretended the policy would be implemented via “prosecutorial discretion,” with each case considered individually, in practice, USCIS officials say, any illegal immigrant who appears eligible is granted deferred status -- which comes with benefits such as a work permit, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license. More than 750,000 illegal immigrants currently enjoy this functional amnesty.
Keeping to DACA, contributing writer Maeve Higgins ran a “clever” bit of dehumanization of a Republican political opponent, in a kind of creepy assault on Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller in a Sunday Review essay to appear in tomorrow’s edition: “Stephen Miller Is the Enemy of My Dreams."
Every heroine must have an opponent who makes her better, stronger, nimbler than before. Who shall propel me forward on waves of bitter animosity? Crucially, I live in a chaotic time where people like me, people who usually bumble along unbothered, have to step up and stand for something. It’s not a hardening of the heart so much as a sharpening of the spirit.
So recently I closed my eyes and looked around on a deep level for who’s bothering me. All my life I’ve been mystified by and envious of people with a clear sense of purpose combined with an undeserved sense of confidence. Then I have pet hates -- ones that have bloomed so abundant in this country of late, namely racism, the demonizing of immigrants, and white people lashing out at progress because they somehow feel victimized by it. Out of this checklist, a phantasm emerged, and as it took shape I saw it was none other than Stephen Miller, waving at me cheerfully as he stepped into view....
Yikes.
