DACA

In a Fit of Petty Vengeance Following His Racist Vulgarity, Trump Declares DACA ‘Dead’

Posted by on January 14, 2018 at 11:46 am. 2 Comments :

From the beginning of his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump has displayed a pattern of bigotry and hatred toward people of color. His campaign announcement speech famously smeared Mexicans as criminals and rapists. So the vulgar insult directed and Haiti and Africa as “shithole countries” should not come as much of a surprise to those who have been paying attention.

Donald Trump

Of particular interest to Trump has been the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that protected immigrants brought into the United States as children. Trump has occasionally expressed a rather disingenuous support for the program, despite his refusal to take any positive action to preserve it. In fact, last year he unilaterally repealed it by executive action. At the time he pretended to be concerned about the plight of the DACA recipients (Dreamers), but claimed that it would be up to Congress to resolve the matter. He tweeted that:

Four months later Trump found himself in a controversy over his blatantly racist remarks during a meeting with members of Congress. So naturally his reaction was to deflect from the reality of the situation and, blame others for the problem, and make the innocent suffer:

To put the onus on Congress for the problem he created is just plain ludicrous. And it’s made all the worse by the comments he made during the meeting wherein he explicitly deferred to the will of Congress to settle on a bipartisan solution (which they did, but he rejected):

“I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with. I am very much reliant on the people in this room. I know most of the people on both sides. I have a lot of respect for the people on both sides. And my — what I approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with. I have great confidence in the people. If they come to me with things that I’m not in love with, I’m going to do it because I respect them.”

So Trump was committing to accept whatever Congress agreed on. But when presented with that agreement he told them to go to hell. And then there was this exchange with Sen. Diane Feinstein:

Feinstein: What about a clean DACA bill now, with a commitment that we go into a comprehensive immigration reform procedure?
Trump: […] We’re going to do DACA, and then we can start immediately on the phase two, which would be comprehensive. I would like to do that. Go ahead. I think a lot of people would like to see that, but I think we have to do DACA first.

Trump was quickly interrupted by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who frantically sought to correct the President’s miscomprehension of the Republican position on this issue. But it was clear that Trump still didn’t understand where he went wrong after McCarthy’s correction.

It took two days before Trump was sufficiently schooled on his “mistake” to offer any further comments. And the direction he chose to go was to threaten the total demise of DACA and preposterously blame it on Democrats. Even worse, he implied an absurd connection to military funding as a related victim of the dispute. He’s trying to smear Democrats as anti-military even though it has nothing to do with DACA.

That’s just his knee-jerk reaction to any controversy. He thinks if he cites some other popular theme (military or law enforcement, the flag or national anthem, America first, MAGA) he can stir up support from his dimwitted base. And the sad thing about that is that he’s right. In the meantime, let’s not gloss over the fact that Trump has shut the door on DACA for his own partisan and racist reasons.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

DACA: The ‘Cruel Hand’ of Donald Trump Steals Hope Away From America’s DREAMers

Posted by on September 4, 2017 at 8:43 am. 2 Comments :

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) was implemented by the Obama administration in 2012. Its purpose was to provide undocumented immigrants, who entered the country as minors, protection from deportation. Applicants must have completed school or military service and cannot have a criminal record. The program is a humanitarian solution to the unfair punishment of young people who weren’t responsible for their immigration status. The beneficiaries are known as DREAMers because through DACA they were allowed to pursue the American Dream.

DACA DREAMers

For several days Donald Trump has been teasing a final decision on the future of DACA. And on Sunday, the day that Trump declared a National Day of Prayer, he also dashed the prayers of the DREAMers. White House sources reported that Trump has decided to end DACA with a six month delay before enforcement. It’s a typically Trumpian demonstration of callous insensitivity and overt bigotry. Criticism of his decision has already begun to emerge. And the reaction by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) is especially relevant and moving:

“It’s a cruel hand that extends the American dream and then steals it away. With a fierce faith in our country’s word, DREAMers walked out of the shadows and bravely embraced the only home they’ve ever known. In contrast, tonight President Trump gave in to his own dark fear of diversity and punished hundreds of thousands of young people for simply trusting the United States.”

Cruelty barely describes what Trump is proposing. The DREAMers registered for the program and paid $500.00 in fees. They completed school, got jobs, or enlisted in the military. Now they are identifiable and vulnerable. They believed in America and believed that this nation, the only home they ever knew, was honorable and trustworthy. What they didn’t anticipate was the hateful reign of a born liar. A con man who couldn’t care less about the dignity of keeping one’s word or honoring a promise. And now they have to live in fear of being banished to a foreign land where they may not even speak the language.

That’s what Donald Trump is putting these innocents through. Remember, they broke no laws. They were children under the care of their parents. And their parents only wanted what all parents want: a better life for their kids. It’s the promise chiseled into the base of the Statue of Liberty. It’s the pledge made by a prior administration that the current one has turned into a trap. That’s even after Trump was asked if the Dreamers should be worried, and he replied disingenuously “We love the Dreamers. We love everybody.”

Now, if Trump goes through with this, there will be 800,000 people whose lives are hanging by a legal thread. This is more than a humanitarian travesty. Economists at the Center for American Progress have studied the impact of ending DACA. They concluded that it “would result in a loss of $460.3 billion from the national GDP over the next decade.” The loss of the productivity of these workers and the taxes they paid would severely hamper the economy. And the decline of spending in their communities would cost business profits and jobs.

A peculiar wrinkle to the proposal being reported is the six month delay. The presumption is that Trump is giving Congress that time to draft and pass legislation to replace DACA. But what would Trump have to gain by handing this off to Congress? If they fail to act, then he still gets the blame for ending the program. If they pass legislation to preserve it, then Trump is tagged with being the racially divisive swine who tried to kill it. And he would be in the awkward position of signing legislation that reversed his own executive order.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

The only possible upside would be the bolstering of Trump’s support within the alt-right, white supremacist movement. Just as with his pandering to the bigots after Charlottesville, and his pardoning of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Trump may be playing to his deplorable base. His approval ratings are so low that he needs to cling to every potential vote, no matter how repulsive. But that’s only a plus in the perverse world of Trump and his racist followers. And it surely won’t help him with the majority of Americans who have the same dreams for the nation as DACA’s DREAMers.