Senior Reporter
Newsweek
https://apple.news/AVLJN2Lt1SD-o5h81B1pQqw
Chantal Da Silva reports for Newsweek:
Most Americans Want Undocumented Immigrants To Be Able To Stay Legally
November 12, 2019
The majority of Americans believe it is important for the U.S. to establish a way for most undocumented immigrants in the country to remain here legally, a new study has found.
The revelation from the Pew Research Center’s findings, which were published on Tuesday, comes as the Supreme Court deliberates over whether the Trump administration can legally end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Under the DACA program, nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. by their parents have been allowed to live and work in the country.
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However, the Trump administration has sought to bring the program to an end, a bid which was temporarily blocked by courts and which will now be brought before the Supreme Court this week.
According to the Pew Research Center’s findings, two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) said it was “very or somewhat important” for the U.S. to establish a way for “most immigrants in the country illegally to remain her legally.”
While support for a pathway for undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. fell largely along party lines, nearly half (48 percent) of Republican and Republican-leaning participants said they were in favor of the idea.
Meanwhile, 82 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they felt it was an important goal.
In addition to establishing a route for most undocumented immigrants to be able to remain in the U.S., Americans also expressed support for taking in refugees fleeing war and violence.
Seventy-three percent of the 9,895 respondents who were surveyed between September 3 and 15 said they felt it was important for the U.S. to take in refugees, with Republicans showing greater support for that goal than in previous years.
In 2016, Pew said, just 40 percent of Republicans identified admitting refugees as an important initiative. This year, however, a majority of Republicans (58 percent) said they supported that goal.
While the majority of Americans were in favor of both of the above initiatives, they also expressed support for strengthening security along the U.S.-Mexico border, with 68 percent of participants in favor of that goal.
Around 9 in 10 Republicans (91 percent) said they were in favor of increasing security at the border, while about half of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents (49 percent) said they believed it was an important bid.
The apparent divide between Republicans and Democrats is also significant when it comes to increasing deportations of immigrants unauthorized to be in the U.S.
Roughly eight-in-ten Republicans (83 percent) said they were in favor of increasing deportations, including 51 percent who identified that initiative as “very important.”
Meanwhile, among Democrats, support for that bid was much lower, with around just three-in-10 (31 percent) in favor of boosting deportations and only 10 percent calling it a “very important” goal.”
Despite what the American public thinks, the decision on whether DACA is allowed to move forward currently sits in the Supreme Court’s hands.
Justices will be deliberating on whether federal courts should have been able to block the Trump administration’s decision to end the program—and whether Trump had the legal right to end it in the first place.
If the program does come to an end, the thousands of people who benefit the program, as well as the many who might have applied for DACA protections in the future could face deportation from the U.S.
In an interview with Newsweek on Monday, Carolina Fung Feng, a DACA recipient and plaintiff in one of the cases before the Supreme Court, said that if the Supreme Court rules in the Trump administration’s favor, she could lose her job and be deported back to a country that she left when she was 12-years-old.
“I’d be separated from my family here in New York and, also, I would lose the ability to be independent,” Feng said. “Right now, I live on my own with my younger brother, so if they were to eliminate the DACA program permanently I wouldn’t be able to help my brother pay for the house.”
Feng, who is now 30 and works in the U.S. helping adult learners earn their high school equivalency diplomas, said she cannot understand why the U.S. government would want to see the country lose a population that has contributed to the country’s economy and strengthened its local communities.
“We contribute to this economy. We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “We’re just human beings who want to live a better life and we want to protect our families and do the best we can so they can have a better life.”
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A majority of the Supremes appear ready to “go along to get along” with the latest move by the Trump Administration to screw, demean, and dehumanize undocumented American young people who are continuing to contribute to our society.
A Court that not so long ago had little trouble treating inanimate and amoral large corporate interests as “persons” under the Constitution appeared to have no such concerns for the rights and dignity of a large class of human beings actually living, working, and studying in America.
By either agreeing with the bogus legal argument half-heartedly presented by the Solicitor General or saying Trump could act for no particular reason other than his White Nationalist political agenda, the Supremes appeared willing to allow young people to be held hostage for an extreme nativist anti-immigrant legislative program.
Trump gave his usual “off-the-wall tweet.” First, he smeared so-called “Dreamers” as containing among their ranks “tough, hardened criminals” (even though such individuals were specifically excluded from the program by the Obama Administration). At the same time, he said that if his Supremes gave him what he demanded he would cut a “deal” with the Dems for Dreamer relief. We’ve heard that before.
That’s highly unlikely to happen without regime change in the Executive and the Senate. Similar to the last failed exercise, the Trump Administration would almost certainly demand an end to refugee and asylum programs, sharp cuts to legal immigration, massive new funding for the New American Gulag, and a free hand to summarily deport almost anyone without due process in return for even limited Dreamer relief. That’s a “deal” the Dems aren’t going to make.
Therefore, most Dreamers likely will continue to “twist in the wind” for another election cycle and perhaps longer. With Immigration Court backlogs at an astounding 1.3 million and growing, they won’t be forcibly removed any time in the near future, even if Trump wins re-election.
On the other hand, deprived of work authorization and “color of law” status, most will face obstacles to legal employment or study in the U.S. This will leave them with the “choice” of “going underground” or “self-deportation.” Either way, America will be deprived of the full potential of some of our most talented and dedicated younger generation.
Of course, I hope that my gloomy analysis is wrong. But, things are sure looking like another avoidable judicially-enabled nightmare in a nation that has empowered a White Nationalist minority to run roughshod over individual rights with judicial complicity.
I would expect the Supreme majority’s decision to be loaded with some disingenuous and self-serving references as to how disputes like the fate of the Dreamers should be determined by the “political system.” Then, it will be good to remember that this is a Court that has chosen to take a “pass” on partisan gerrymandering and other gimmicks used by the GOP and the Trump Administration to disenfranchise racial minorities, suppress the vote, and circumvent true democratic rule. In other words, the Supremes know full well that the “political system” is broken to a large extent because they have helped enable its demise.
That’s why it’s important for the New Due Process Army and others who believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, and basic human decency to get out the vote, remove the GOP across the board, and pave the way for better, more intellectually honest judges, who will uphold individual rights and true Constitutional values rather than siding with the tyranny of an unrestrained, unprincipled Executive and inanimate corporate interests in derogation of human rights.
Obviously, there are lots of folks out there, even among the GOP, who don’t “buy in” to Trump’s unrelenting cruelty toward migrants (except, I guess, those migrants he marries and their foreign-born families). The Dems shouldn’t be afraid to run on a program of Dreamer relief combined with other practical, common sense reforms that would allow us to “rationalize” the inevitable and largely positive forces of human migration. We could actually be “beefing up” our revenue collections with a sane immigration policy, rather than hemorrhaging billions on cruel, inhumane, and ultimately futile “enforcement only” schemes and gimmicks. And, yes, with a more rational and realistic system in place, including for the processing of legitimate refugees and asylees, removal of those who evade it would become more efficient, effective, and uniform than it is under our current broken system, at least as administered by the Trump Administration.
Finally, here’s a link to a great article from Zachary Pleat at Mediamatters “calling out” NBC, CBS, and other so-called “mainstream media” for uncritical repetition and re-publication of Trump’s smears and racist-inspired lies about “Dreamers.” https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/daca-goes-supreme-court-cbs-and-nbc-push-trumps-lie-about-dreamers.
PWS
11-12-19