DACA

The circuitous path of DACA, the program to keep illegal children in the country, has taken yet another tern and one I might add for the better. First Obama said he could not do anything as President to help these children. Responding in October 2010 to demands that he implement immigration reforms unilaterally, Obama declared, "I am not king. I can't do these things just by myself." In March 2011, he said that with "respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that's just not the case." In May 2011, he acknowledged that he couldn't "just bypass Congress and change the (immigration) law myself. ... That's not how a democracy works. Then later he did just that. Yet in 2012, he did it anyway. He put DACA in place to provide pseudo-legal status to illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as minors, including as teenagers. He promised them that they wouldn't be deported and provided them with work authorizations and access to Social Security and other government benefits. Then Trump recognizing that DACA was illegal announced the end and pushed for congress to decide. This is where laws are written not in the form of executive orders. Congress will now have to do their job, something they have trouble with and thus their 10% approval rating.