Trump’s immigration policies, like a whimsical tweet about banning transgender people from the military, are confusing, contradictory and based more on marketing for re-election than sound policy. While rescinding DACA was a bad idea on many levels, recent events most likely won’t be the program’s end. It’s interesting, however, to see how we got to the point of struggling to keep one of the most popular programs in immigration, and what the implications are moving forward.
Similar to his short-lived foray into healthcare politics (“Who knew healthcare could be so complicated”), the President is throwing himself into an issue which has the sort of political logjam that, quite frankly, the right Frank Underwooding could partially cure: immigration reform. What the Commander in Chief fails to appreciate, however, is that it also requires a true makeover of highly technical legal systems that will have a broad effect on nearly every aspect of American life and government.
Just a brief glance at the implications of any immigration policy change would include who businesses can hire; who has money to put back into the economy and government; how many more billions of dollars we will spend on deportations, raids and prisons; how many businesses will have to shutter their windows because their workers or customers will disappear after a raid; even military readiness (especially translators and the MAVNI program).
Legislation would also include defining the complicated issues of federalism that will doubtlessly arise uniquely in every state as they adjust state-level government to compliment, or even offset, some changes made (i.e. sanctuary cities or SB 1070).
Basically, all signs point to Congress, a body completely inept at passing legislation for years now, not being able to pass perhaps the most hot-button, complex legislation outside of health care. With legislation all but being a non-starter, we have to look to Trump.
Although it’s hard to predict the President in general, on immigration it’s particularly difficult as he’s said contradicting statements on DREAMers. While he professed a “lot of love” for DREAMers and gave a vague promise to do something if Congress fails to act, this was likely in part because of the tremendous lashback he faced on every front except for the same small crowd of White Nationalists he has been consistently courting.
Though DACA is a popular program, taking shots at it from the far right has been a popular hobby for those insecure about their re-election in places they can be primaried from the right (basically all the places pushing hardest against Obamacare). In addition, it is one of the few high-profile Obama policies that Trump can unilaterally undo,.
While all this can be hard to take, we can’t forget the broader context: DACA was a hard, uphill battle for years to get a minor, temporary relief for the most sympathetic of undocumented immigrants in the country today, all of whom entered the country as minors.
Even more than the direct fate of the DREAMers, which is no small matter, this should be a wakeup call for anyone invested in immigration (which is everyone): if you can’t support DREAMers discretely living their lives in the country (and sometimes simply not being deported to a place where a cartel will kill them immediately upon return), you really just want to get rid of every Mexican you possibly can, even at the cost of billions to the economy.
While I honestly doubt Trump, a man raised in Queens (one of the most ethnically diverse regions on the planet) truly believes anything close to ending DACA, he’s really leaning into the White Nationalist angle of politics. It’s come to the point where I no longer believe his personal policy preferences matter, he’s a man that will say and do anything. To see this, we need only look to his pardon of Arpaio, “Mexican rapist” opening primary speech and now his rescinding of DACA: he’s doubling down on capturing a small, embarrassing demographic of the electorate typically seen on PeopleofWalmart.com.
What is going to happen if, despite all the odds, an immigration bill has a real chance of making it through Congress? Will President Trump help ferry it through the process, or throw up obstructions and threaten a veto?
If Trump wants to sell his base that he will stay consistent with his “Mexican rapist" speech, following through on rescinding DACA while finding excuses to strike down any minor immigration reform that might come up and increasing deportations, raids and immigration prisons is exactly how you do it.
While I would not put my money on Trump actually unilaterally ending every aspect of the DACA program, he might just tear a piece out of it. As we saw with his reaction to Charlottesville, Trump is working off of a re-election calculation that’s difficult to predict from the outside. No matter what he does on DACA, however, I think Trump’s administration will be some very difficult years for immigrant rights activists, and we’re just starting to see that take shape.