Congress must take action immediately.
by Brian Leubitz

The rumors are growing that Trump is planning on “ending DACA as we know it” on Friday.

President Trump plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program “as it exists today” on Friday, Fox News reports.

Under DACA, nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children have received work permits and deferral from deportation.

According to Fox, a senior administration official told correspondent John Roberts that Trump would end the program “as early as” Friday. (The Hill)

This would not only be a disaster for the recipient Dreamers but also for our state and nation. Nearly a quarter of a million Californians have been accepted into the DACA program, allowing these young immigrants to get jobs, live their lives, and California is better for it.

According to federal data, close to 223,000 young people have been approved for DACA in California in the program’s five-year history. If DACA recipients lose their work eligibility, there will be ripple effects, said Bill Hing, who teaches immigration law at the University of San Francisco.

“These folks will be driven underground, and the underground economy will expand, because folks are afraid,” Hing said. “They are going to be working under the table. We will lose overnight the economic contributions of 200-plus thousand folks in California, and that is going to hurt our economy.” (KQED)

Congress needs to take immediate action to fix this looming crisis. There have been indications that there could be votes for setting up some legal status for Dreamers in the house when an amendment in support of the Dreamers saw a flurry of Republican votes:

Twenty-six Republicans rebelled against an amendment to the spending bill that would end President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA — an initiative that has granted stays of deportation to thousands of young undocumented immigrants, many of whom were brought into the country illegally by their parents. Though they are all staunch critics of Obama and oppose his unilateral changes to immigration policy, they cannot reconcile that opposition with their overall support for the policies he has put into place. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., passed — just barely — by a vote of 218-209.

Some of the Republicans who voted against the provision are those who typically oppose legislative language to roll back DACA or other similar programs offering deportation relief within certain immigrant communities, and strongly support passing comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation: Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida; Jeff Denham and David Valadao of California; and Mike Coffman of Colorado, among others. (RollCall)

Now, seeing as how this is a Republican Congress with a crazy man in the White House, you never know what is going to happen. But this is a rare opportunity for bipartisan action. Let’s just hope that the current occupant of the White House can see past his own rhetoric to find some compassion.