DACA: Right for CA, Right for USA

The Trump Administration has promised to move forward with plans to deport those immigrants living illegally in the United States who were brought here as children by parents or guardians. For the sake of our state and nation, it is essential that these plans do not include repeal of the popular and successful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. If DACA is repealed, Congress must replace it with a similar initiative.

DACA is the program President Obama put in place in 2012, which allows people brought to the United States as minors (aka, “Dreamers”) to get permits to work and study and delay deportation until a permanent solution to our broken immigration system can be found. To date, roughly 800,000 of these undocumented immigrants have voluntarily taken advantage of this program to come out of the shadows of our society. These are people who in most cases know no other home than the United States, and who have been vetted to make sure they are not criminals or a threat to national security.

Despite what critics say, DACA is not a form of amnesty, and program participants must adhere to a strict set of criteria to qualify. They must have been under 16 when they illegally entered the United States, under the age of 31 at the time of the program’s initiation, and have lived continuously in this country since 2007. Participants must also go through a comprehensive biometric and biographic background check for criminal or terrorist activity or connections.

Not only was this the morally right thing to do—these people did nothing wrong themselves as they were under the charge of parents or guardians when illegally entering the U.S.—it was also great for our economy. According to a 2015 report by the Center for American Progress, DACA and the related Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program combined could help U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) grow $230 billion over a ten year period.

In California alone, the increase in state GDP over the same period would be a staggering $75 billion, helping to increase the earnings of California residents by nearly $40 billion and creating nearly 10,000 jobs every year. But the flip side is also true—if we repeal DACA, we could see a drop in national GDP of more than $400 billion.

Removing hundreds of thousands of people from the workforce in a single day would create havoc in businesses, professions, and institutions across the United States. We’d also be losing hundreds of thousands of consumers who support local businesses and our economy, while at the same time spending huge sums to deport masses of people who pose no threat to our nation, cannot be held legally responsible for the circumstances of their entry, and are deeply embedded in our economy and society.

Deporting this population of hard-working, law-abiding residents would also create moral and cultural havoc. Consider the fact that today, every person with a cell phone is effectively a working cameraman. Then consider how many heartbreaking videos will hit social media as hundreds of thousands of Dreamers—who are culturally American, and our neighbors, friends, fellow parishioners, employees, and bosses—are forcibly removed from the United States. These kinds of forced mass migrations are not without precedent, of course. But do we really want America to be associated with this precedent? These are very dangerous waters, and even more dangerous moral company to keep.

There has to be another way. From both a political and moral standpoint, Republicans must either work with President-elect Trump to find a way to continue the program, or develop legislation that implements another program that similarly protects these Dreamers. If they do not, they will most certainly suffer the consequences in future elections when the growing Hispanic voting bloc becomes even more reliably Democratic.

But they won’t be the only ones suffering. All Americans will feel this blow, none so much as the Dreamers themselves, who are American in all but name.