Sohn: Ending DACA is poor way to make Congress work

Supporters of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, chant slogans and hold signs while joining a Labor Day rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. President Donald Trump has since announced he will end the program, but with a six-month delay. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
Supporters of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, chant slogans and hold signs while joining a Labor Day rally in downtown Los Angeles on Monday. President Donald Trump has since announced he will end the program, but with a six-month delay. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)

Once again, President Donald Trump and the GOP are the dogs that caught the car they've been chasing.

First it was majority Republican rule in the White House and both chambers of Congress. Trouble is, they understand only obstruction, not governing.

Second was "Hooray, hurry, repeal and replace Obamacare." Never mind that not only did Republicans have no replacement, they had no answer for the 20 million Americans who want to keep their Obamacare, no matter what the GOP calls it.

Now it's immigration - both with the border wall that America can ill afford and with DACA - the shorthand moniker for the Obama executive action Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

As expected, Trump announced Tuesday that he would scrap protections for roughly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought here illegally as children. These are young people who for the most part have known no other country as their home. They are English speakers, workers, military members, students - all working legally here with a two-year work permit that the DACA program gave them when they voluntarily stepped out of the shadows and signed up - putting themselves and their families at risk. They did so because this is home to them. This is their country. They are our new patriots.

But now in six months, according to Trump's announcement, they have to get out or be put out - deported "home" to that country that is not their home.

The fact is, Trump's new rule, a nod to his shrinking base, pits law against justice.

And it's the newest example of a GOP - the one that seized on the wedge issue of immigration to stir up votes - now finding itself in the unenviable position of being the dog that caught the car by falling under the wheels.

Deporting nearly a million young people who are following American rules is increasingly unpopular. Aside from being needlessly cruel and coldhearted, it's just stupid.

The parents of Dreamers worked and paid taxes. They bought homes and paid property taxes, or rented from those who paid those taxes. The Dreamers, too, study, work and pay taxes. They came forward to become legal, and they are excellent citizen stock; educated, hard-working, patriotic and motivated. Like most immigrants, they likely would start new businesses at a much greater rate than native-born U.S. citizens. They will be - in fact, already are - an economic plus to the country.

Some 95 percent of those covered by DACA are working or in school, according to FWD.us, an advocacy organization supported by the tech industry. Revoking their work permits would cripple employers and consumers, and cost our economy more than $400 billion over 10 years.

And since Dreamers are a group that was screened from the 11 million undocumented immigrants, they've already demonstrated they are trustworthy.

Despite the Trump administration trope, we're not making America safer by ending DACA in six months. Ending DACA would be America's loss, not our gain, and it would put us further and further away from being "great" again.

Even Trump seems to know this is a poor solution. The New York Times wrote Tuesday that Trump last week, facing a line-in-the-sand moment from a threatened red-states' lawsuit deadline, asked his aides for "a way out" of the dilemma he created by promising to roll back the program when he was a presidential candidate.

Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly offered the six-month delay suggestion. Trump took it, and passed the hot potato to Congress. He also left the actual announcement to Attorney General Jeff Sessions - who took no questions after his outline.

In recent weeks, 10 state attorneys general wrote to Sessions, threatening to mount a legal challenge to DACA unless the administration phased out the program by Sept. 5. Tennessee was one of those states, but our government last week withdrew the Volunteer State's name from the effort. In the meantime, Sessions informed Trump he would not defend what he considered an unconstitutional order in court, should the states follow through on their threat.

Tennessee, with 8,340 young Tennesseans in DACA who could lose their jobs and face possible immediate deportation, has come to understand the downsides of ending this program and joined the majority of Americans who believe the Dreamers should get a break. Not amnesty: DACA is a work path to legal residency, not a free pass.

"Currently, DACA recipients in Tennessee pay almost $21.3 million a year in state and local taxes. With the loss of DACA protections, Tennessee will lose $7.5 million every year. Additionally, the GDP loss from removing DACA workers in Tennessee will cost the state $338,141,272 every year as well as $460 billion nationally over the next decade," according to a statement by the FWD.us Tennessee Coalition.

President Barack Obama pitched DACA as a workaround to buy those young people some time while Congress dithered on real immigration reform. Obama did the right thing because Republicans in Congress wouldn't. Now Trump has thrown the ball to Congress again.

Maybe this time, our senators and representatives will find a way to vote with their hearts and their heads.

Upcoming Events