In response to President Trump’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project said:
“President Trump’s decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is an inexcusable, narrowly ideological action inconsistent with this nation’s highest values and contrary to what most Americans believe.”
As NELP stated when news first broke that President Trump would announce the end of the DACA program, any plan to take legal status away from the brave young “Dreamers” who benefit from DACA, leaving them vulnerable to deportation, is both impractical and inhumane. It is yet another shameful concession by the president to the white supremacists that he remains so willing to cater to and so reluctant to condemn.
Reports show that ending DACA could cause as many as 30,000 people to lose their jobs every month, as it would impact the ability of recipients to work legally. Job losses of this magnitude will also negatively impact local and state economies in the form of reduced state revenue, reduced spending, a reduction in the number of talented employees, and more.
Congressional Republicans who condemned the racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and hate that fueled the Charlottesville protests must now show that they can go beyond words to action. Speaker Paul Ryan, who stated in response to the protests that “bigotry is counter to all this country stands for” and that “[t]here can be no moral ambiguity,” must know that a failure on Republicans’ part to preserve DACA would let bigotry and supremacy win. He must lead Republicans in creating a path to citizenship for the hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who call America home.”
