Sep 6, 2017 4 min read

The American dream. It holds different meanings for different people. For some, it’s owning a house. For others, it might be helping their children to have a better life than they had. For about 800,000 young people known as “Dreamers,” there was the promise that they could legally live, work and go to school in America if they followed the rules set forth in President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

DACA addressed the uncertain fate of young people who were brought to this country by parents who immigrated illegally. Many of these Dreamers have no memory of living in a country other than the United States. And now, their futures have been cast into doubt by President Trump in a move that is both cruel and foolish. Trump invalidated the program and has given Congress – yes, the Republican-controlled Congress that has displayed a remarkable level of ineptitude on pretty much every task before it – six months to decide whether to retain DACA in some fashion. Otherwise, he’ll presumably start rounding up and deporting these young, would-be Americans.

A few facts about the Dreamers, courtesy of an ABC News report:

• Dreamers reside in every U.S. state. More than three-quarters of them hail from Mexico, but they come from such diverse nations as South Korea, the Philippines, India and Poland.

• To qualify for DACA, participants had to have been younger than 31 when the program took effect in 2012, and they had to have come to this country before the age of 16, and been here since at least June 15, 2007.

• According to a study by a Washington, D.C.-based think tank called the Migration Policy Institute, a larger share of those eligible for DACA, 83 percent, were employed, as compared with the general population (79 percent). They also were more likely to be attending college.

Of course, President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced the end of the program with a smile, raised the specter of these immigrants taking Americans’ jobs.

Said the Tweeter in Chief, “Make no mistake, we are going to put the interest of AMERICAN CITIZENS FIRST! The forgotten men & women will no longer be forgotten.”

Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey said what the Trump administration has forgotten is American values.

“The ‘Dreamers’ are young people who have lived in our country since they were children. They have been law-abiding residents who have learned English, paid taxes and secured jobs that allow them to support themselves and their families. Our government promised them that they would be protected if they came forward, and now President Trump is breaking that promise. … This action is profoundly unjust, immoral and without regard for basic fairness.”

The president can make the argument that he’s not killing DACA, but is instead giving members of Congress the opportunity, if they desire, to codify something that was put in place without their participation. Of course, Congress has failed time and again to address immigration issues, and Republicans, especially, will be wary of granting any rights to immigrants who did not arrive on these shores through legal channels. Their first priority, as we have noted, is their own re-election, and being seen as soft on immigration could attract challengers from the further-right reaches of the party.

We’ll give the last words of this editorial to the father of the DACA program, President Obama, because in his response Tuesday to the current president’s action, he hit the nail squarely on the head.

“Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we’d want our own kids to be treated. It’s about who we are as a people – and who we want to be.”