Brenda Blagg: Deferred no more

Trump, Sessions pull plug on child immigrants

Unfortunately, the Trump administration on Tuesday moved to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

There are tons of difficult questions now about what happens next.

Early morning news reports focused too much on the politics and how it appeared that the president pushed the job off on his attorney general.

Yes, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, not Trump, did announce revocation of the program that was put in place by the Obama administration to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who were brought into the country as children.

But, make no mistake, President Trump owns the decision and its eventual impact on the lives of the 800,000 young immigrants, the "Dreamers" who have had at least a temporary reprieve from deportation.

Instead, they could seek renewable work permits ever since President Obama created the program by executive order. Those permits opened opportunities for these young people to pursue education and work and to find what for them has been an elusive American dream.

Many are young adults now who grew up knowing the U.S. as their only home.

A young woman who arrived in Northwest Arkansas at age 3 provides a stunning example of the difference that DACA made.

Zessna Leticia has lived in these Ozark hills for 25 years, including the eight years it took for her to get her undergraduate degree from the University of Arkansas.

She spent a lot of that time working odd jobs to help her parents pay the tuition that cost an undocumented student much more than the classmates she grew up with in Arkansas.

Some semesters, they could afford only a course or two, but she persisted, securing that degree and that piece of her American dream.

In a Facebook post this weekend, Leticia wrote that, before August 2012, she had little hope for the future.

She applied for DACA and, in 2013, she said her life changed completely. She was finally able, she wrote, "to live without uncertainty," to pay her tuition and to move up in life.

She graduated "with zero debt and with a great job lined up" and is on the job now, helping others.

"This is more than just a piece of paper. This permit allows me to exist," she said of her DACA status.

Her story is one she guarded for much of her life but has shared in more recent years as an advocate.

That continuing advocacy was behind her recent Facebook post.

"Before you type or say anything negative about DACA or its recipients, know that we are your children's childhood friends, your current educators, and health care providers," she wrote. "But also know that we are people, just like you wanting to work for our families."

It was a simple, heartfelt message that humanizes this continuing national debate over immigration.

On Tuesday, even in the wake of the news of DACA's demise, she wrote of promise.

"This may be the end of a program but what we have in our hands is an opportunity for a better, more permanent solution."

She and other Dreamers hold out hope but they'll need a lot of help to find that better, more permanent solution.

The roll out of Trump's decision to phase out DACA, hinted at over the weekend and finalized on Tuesday, arguably puts the onus on the U.S. Congress to put into law some replacement protection for the Dreamers, if not others who are undocumented.

The administration apparently feared that a lawsuit, threatened by Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and other states' officials, would successfully upend the DACA program, if Trump didn't.

So he did end it, or will soon.

As Sessions explained, the Congress will have six months to come up with a fix before the government stops renewing permits for people who have been covered by DACA.

That's a tall order, given the divisions in the Congress over immigration, not to mention the many other serious issues before the lawmakers right now.

The unfortunate question is whether the Congress can do anything in six months, much less something of the magnitude of immigration reform.

Yet, that's where hope lies and where the Dreamers and their supporters must now turn for help.

Commentary on 09/06/2017

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