This week’s arguments at the Supreme Court about DACA, the program that allows young people brought to this country through no choice of their own to stay, may be the ultimate example of failure in Washington.
If Congress had acted as the Founding Fathers intended, doing the hard work of passing laws rather than pushing that responsibility onto the president and the Supreme Court, the nation would have a solution in place by now. President Obama would not have felt compelled to issue a policy allowing an estimated 800,000 young people who are American in every way except by citizenship or documented alien status to stay, study and work.
And President Trump would not have felt compelled to rescind that policy, leading to Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments that ultimately will allow unelected justices to decide the issue.
When Obama issued his order in 2014, we called it the right solution done in the wrong way. “The good notions it contains will become fodder in a legal and political firestorm that separates them from rational consideration and compromise,” we wrote, adding that the undocumented immigrants involved would live with the fear that a future president might undo what was done.
That prediction would seem remarkable in its prescience, except that it was so obviously predictable.
Unfortunately, this has become the way to operate in hyperpartisan Washington. Some issues — health care reform, the balancing act between LGTBQ rights and religious freedom, the adoption of a federal budget and immigration reform, to name a few — have become such lucrative fundraising points on all sides that little incentive exists to find real solutions.
But while politicians campaign against the proposals of their opponents, real people suffer. Compassion, family values and effective border security take a back seat to politics.
Congress should pass a law giving the children of undocumented residents who have completed high school and avoided trouble with the law the right to pursue a higher education and obtain jobs. The nation would benefit in obvious ways from such a law. Deporting those children, on the other hand, would hurt them and a nation that might have benefitted from their accomplishments.
The tragedy of the failure to act on DACA, the deferred action for childhood arrivals, is that these young people are in a never-ending state of uncertainty, fearing they might be sent to a homeland they know little about.
The tragedy of the failure of overall immigration reform is that families are torn apart and the nation wastes its energy pursuing people who provide work the economy needs.
The tragedy of the failure of overall immigration reform is that families are torn apart and the nation wastes its energy pursuing people who provide work the economy needs. An orderly work-visa process would help law enforcement separate hard-working immigrants from criminals.
Obama called his policy a “a temporary stopgap measure.” The current case before the Supreme Court is an indictment on Congress’ inability to pass something permanent.
After Tuesday’s oral arguments, court watchers said it seemed as if four of the more liberal justices leaned toward rejecting President Trump’s decision to reverse Obama’s order, while four of the more conservative justices leaned toward allowing it to stand.
That would leave Chief Justice John Roberts as the deciding vote and, by default, the most powerful person in the land on this issue.
Americans, who never have seen Roberts’ name on a ballot, should not be comfortable with that.