There has been some controversy over the policy, Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which was established by the Obama Administration in June 2012. This policy states children of unauthorized immigrants can come into the United States temporarily without fear of being deported. In order to be eligible for DACA, immigrants had to be under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012; they should have came into the United States before reaching their 16th birthday and have not been convicted of a felony or other legal issues.
On September 5, 2017 President Donald Trump announced he was ending the program that had protected 800,000 “DREAMers” of deportation. People are outraged with this do to the fact that some of these people have been living in the United States since they were 2 years old and being deported means they are going to return to a country that they barely know. Government teacher, Mr. Morello, states, “It’s an issue because, I think the way that it was passed has been controversial, whether or not Obama had the authority to do so on his own or do so through Congress. For me, personally I would rather a bill like this go through Congress, and that’s what President Trump has said and they seem to be talking about some sort of deal. So we’ll see what happens.” When Obama was President, he asked congress to do something about the issue, but congress didn’t do anything about it. Obama passed it anyway while giving congress two years to fix the issue, which is the same thing President Trump is doing now, but just from opposite sides of the spectrum and for a shorter amount of time.
Mr. Stack, AP Government teacher said, “It’s more than just deporting people, it’s about who’s making the laws in our country and the lack of action of maybe of congress doing what they’re supposed to do. I think that’s the biggest problem we have. Everybody’s focusing on Trump as president now and that kind of thing, but I think, even throughout the Obama Administration, the focus of the people in our government is congress doing what they’re supposed to do? Are they doing their jobs?”
DACA is not a new issue, the concept of DACA has been around for some time, just people are now starting to notice the severity of it. What many people don’t seem to realize about DACA is that they’re only looking at it from their perspectives. DACA or immigration altogether doesn’t just affect immigrates, it affects the American people, America’s economy, the relationship we have with immigrants, etc. Also, in the whole grand scheme of things, DACA is really just a headline for a much bigger story, which is America’s leaders not enforcing the laws. The policy only has been adding to a list of problems that America already has. With regard to illegal immigrants, Americans want to help these people, but not at the expense of losing our country because of it.