Dreaming…

From Reuters (as well as a number of other media outlets) we learn that

President Donald Trump is expected to rescind an Obama administration policy that protects from deportation nearly 800,000 immigrants who as children entered the country illegally, setting the stage for a fight with U.S. business leaders and lawmakers over tough immigration policy.

The article goes on to detail the negative response of the business community to the proposed action, and economists’ prediction that such a move would hurt economic growth and depress tax revenues.

Leave aside the economic consequences. Trump’s willingness to inflict immense human misery is what’s truly appalling. This would be the most immoral action taken thus far by a profoundly immoral administration.

The targets of this move are not criminals. They aren’t even immigration scofflaws; they didn’t choose to come to the United States illegally. They were children. They were brought here by their parents. Most of them have never known another home; significant numbers speak only English. They are productive citizens, small businesspeople and dependable employees, whose value to their communities has been amply documented. Why on earth would Trump want to deport them?

I think we all know the answer to that.

Reuters tells us that the overwhelming majority of the Dreamer immigrants came from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Most are brown, and brown and black people are  by definition un-American “others” to the White Supremacists, neo-Nazis and other assorted bigots who are Trump’s core supporters.

Trump’s utter lack of human empathy has been obvious for a long time; it was prominently on display during his trip to Houston. So it is pointless to expect him to understand or care about the wrenching reality of his proposed order.

Vox has focused on that reality.

Hundreds of thousands of families in the US are anxiously awaiting a decision from President Donald Trump that could change the course of their lives. Will they lose their jobs? Will they have to drop out of college? Will immigration agents knock on their doors to kick them out of the country they consider home? And what will happen to their American kids if they have to leave?…

In the five years since DACA went into effect, thousands of undocumented immigrants have been able to go to college, get driver’s licenses and get jobs and pay taxes for the first time. Many now have their own children, who are American citizens. Parents with DACA are wrestling with the question of what to tell their children, and whether it would be best to leave them in the United States or take them away if they are forced to leave.

When comprehensive immigration reform once again failed to pass Congress, Obama addressed the situation of the so-called “Dreamers” with an executive order creating DACA–Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It allowed a defined subset of young undocumented immigrants to get temporary Social Security numbers and deportation protection. They had to pass criminal background checks, pay taxes, and renew their DACA status every two years. The program was a temporary fix, but during the campaign, Clinton vowed to maintain it.

Trump, of course, made anti-immigrant rhetoric the centerpiece of a campaign that pandered, bigly, to rightwing bigotries.

It is heartbreaking to read the comments of DACA recipients interviewed in the Vox article. These are good people who are in an untenable situation because for years, Congress has consistently failed to pass an immigration bill. Most recently, rather than give President Obama a political “win,” the GOP simply blocked efforts to negotiate a legislative solution to a problem everyone recognized.

Now we have a President whose terrifying ignorance of government is matched only by his inability to think of anyone but himself. If Congress cannot be moved to action by the plight of 800,000 innocent DACA immigrants, there’s no reason to believe they will ever summon the moral courage to defy this bigot-in-chief.

This is a test, and I’m very much afraid America will fail it.

As a current Internet meme puts it: It’s no longer about whether Trump has any decency. It’s about whether we do.

35 Comments

  1. I posted first-hand knowledge back in the spring that local CVS had fired all undocumented workers; I saw nothing of this in the news nationally or locally. If CVS fired all undocumented workers they must have known they were undocumented when they were hired and during the years they were employed. Does anyone doubt that the Trump scare tactics resulted only in undocumented CVS workers here lost their employment, that it was only local and only CVS workers?

    Those that I have my first-hand knowledge of have spent the past five years working long hours and paying an attorney $10,000 to make safe arrangements for the immigrant brought here at 14 years of age by family and who now stays in hiding with their child…as I am sure the majority of other victims of job loss. Arrangements have been made for my friend to return to Mexico to begin working legally from that end to return to the United States to her husband, with their child, but she cowers in hiding. The trip to the airport could result in being arrested and jailed before her safe return to Mexico can occur.

    Trump’s scare tactics, deliberately drawn out for all these months has forced thousands from their work places, lowering their living status and causing them to hide from family, friends and neighbors. Affecting their lives in ways we cannot possibly envision or understand. The odds that some have turned to crime to survive is probably great.

    “Now we have a President whose terrifying ignorance of government is matched only by his inability to think of anyone but himself. If Congress cannot be moved to action by the plight of 800,000 innocent DACA immigrants, there’s no reason to believe they will ever summon the moral courage to defy this bigot-in-chief.

    This is a test, and I’m very much afraid America will fail it.

    As a current Internet meme puts it: It’s no longer about whether Trump has any decency. It’s about whether we do.”

    This president (I REFUSE to capitalize that word when referring to him) is not only ignorant of our laws, has no interest in learning our laws, but he and his family members are benefiting from millions and millions of dollars in illegal income with their use of beggaring foreign workers in their many factories in many other countries. At the same time he is blatantly lying that jobs are returning from American businesses located in countless other countries.

  2. How many of you reading this blog today have full understanding that Trump’s racism and bigotry, his optional ignorance of our laws and governance, will control the futures of much more than the 800,000 immigrants referred to? There are even more American citizens who are part of their lives whose futures are in the hands of our Fascist-in-Chief. Husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, in-laws and the hundreds of thousands of friends, neighbors, co-workers…or FORMER co-workers. This is about more than the actual immigrants; this is about the survival of America and Americans.

    Trump is all about leading this country using the old “carrots and sticks” formula; DACA is but one of the carrots he dangles in front of all of us. The sticks are the protective laws he has already repealed; the outcome of his decision on DACA will have repercussions we have not considered but those repercussions will be felt by millions here and in the home countries of the immigrants. Trump and his trusted sidekicks have bought and paid for more than the presidency of the United States; they now control our very survival due to his alienation of so many of our allies, further angering our enemies and holding those code numbers to the button to begin the destruction of the world at his will.

    “It’s no longer about whether Trump has any decency. It’s about whether we do.”

    Do we have to wait for 2018 and 2020 elections to act?

  3. Amen, John Neal!

    Here is another thought; what percentage of the increasing number of available jobs is due to the firing of those undocumented immigrants? The majority of them working at or barely above minimum wage with no chance of an increase. So; I need to include businesses on my list of those affected by the DACA decision – whichever way it goes!

  4. Being DUMB is one thing, being ROTTEN is another. In this case, we are dealing with a COMBO. Just what the Republican base needed to fulfill the prophecy of the END TIMES [FASCISM].

    Pull out your New Testament and turn to REVELATIONS. It’s all coming true. Don’t fight it. It’ll all go away some day. Just look at history. RIGHT?

  5. Remember the old TV program “You are there”? We are here: The ultimate CATASTROPHE stemming from disregarding THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

    These times are reminiscent of the 60% of the Christian churches in Germany which FORMALLY pledged their allegiance to Adolph Hitler and Nazism.

  6. The decision by Trump hasn’t been made yet as he likes to keep us in suspense with his maybe I will and maybe I won’t send these illegal immigrants back south irrespective of the way they got here and whatever their record since they arrived. In his world his point is that I am in charge and you had better show me the respect an emperor deserves or I will do bad things (or what you may consider bad). Empathy is not involved; it’s a matter of law and order, and all you liberal crybabies can go sulk elsewhere. You lost, so I am representing the will of the majority. Me, Me, Me! Get used to it! Back to our world – If he attempts to send these children back where they came from (and with a defanged and cowardly Congress who may be ready to engage in open warfare with him, but not until they get their tax giveaways to the rich and corporate class in hand), then I think the Congress may (even without their trillions in long term tax giveaways in hand for their libertarian patrons) go to the back room with his advisers and tell them that Trump had better back off or risk open confrontation and that Trump, after covering his narcissistic posterior with appropriate language, will move to slightly alter some of the language but allow these children to stay north of the border(s), telling us what a nice guy he (Trump) is etc. etc. etc., blaming Obama, of course, for the mess he is now cleaning up.

    Speculating on how a demented person who lives part-time in another world will respond to a challenge to his authority is a risky business, but the foregoing is my guess. Parenthetically, I see a parallel with the Trail of Tears and internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during WW II lurking in this situation. Will we never learn, even from our own experience?

  7. Just remember that taking advantage of the Jews who were less than 1% of the population in Germany is much different than ATTEMPTING to take advantage of upwards of 40% of all minorities in “The Land of the Free and the Brave.”

    Talking about SUICIDE?

  8. Gerald,

    “I think the Congress may (even without their trillions in long term tax giveaways in hand for their libertarian patrons) go to the back room with his advisers and tell them that Trump had better back off or risk open confrontation and that Trump, after covering his narcissistic posterior with appropriate language, will move to slightly alter some of the language but allow these children to stay north of the border(s), telling us what a nice guy he (Trump) is etc. etc. etc., blaming Obama, of course, for the mess he is now cleaning up.”

    Hopefully, your scenario will come about. I’m hoping it will.

  9. I’m with Gerald on this one. Trump has backed himself into a corner, and the republican Congress is now showing the first signs of standing up to him. Paul Ryan in fact softly, but plainly, told the idiot in the White House to back off DACA.

    And then there is the hurricane from hell. Reality has descended upon the far right Republicans of Texas. To pay for recovery or tell their constituents that they should pick themselves up by their own soggy boot straps because, you know, tax cuts for the wealthy.

    The conservatives did this to themselves. The payback for selfishness and greed is here.

  10. VOTER SUPPRESSION WOULD HAVE SAVED US FROM ALL THIS. Yes, I am for voter suppression–no one who enjoys an income over $200,000 should be allowed to vote; they have already received enough benefits from the system.

  11. It looks like Trump is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. Can he afford to alienate his base? That is the big question. There’s Congress, but don’t forget there still is Bannon.

    Is Trump anything without his base? I’m afraid he isn’t.

  12. From Sheila’s Blog: If you missed it, Marv Kramer is talking about the craven Congress and its fellow Americans prayerfully acquiescing to its Christian constituency and Trump’s insanity, likening it to Hitler’s and, like Hitler, shaming organized religion into giving its imprimatur to Nazi-ism and calling it “conservatism”.
    Marv Kramer says:
    September 2, 2017 at 9:21 am
    Remember the old TV program “You are there”? We are here: The ultimate CATASTROPHE stemming from disregarding THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
    These times are reminiscent of the 60% of the Christian churches in Germany which FORMALLY pledged their allegiance to Adolph Hitler and Nazism.

  13. We need to keep in mind that our first milestone are the 2018 mid term elections. Repeal and replace Congress is an essential step in recovery. Trump’s power gets flushed by that action. Mueller is an ace in the hole but we need to do what we have to do despite Trump’s endless distractions.

  14. I am beginning to think that, even though those of us that express comments condemning the actions of the Trump Administration and others have the best of intentions, that all we are doing is what all those Germans that ended up being “good Germans” did and nothing more. We have stood back while one political party, the GOP, has basically shut down popular suffrage through radical gerrymandering, and remained silent when we should be screaming our lungs out. Those “good Germans” dismissed Hitler, the NSDAP, and the brown shirts as only rabble, yet they awoke one morning to discover that Hitler was their Chancellor. We have to avoid the same fate they found themselves in which the regretted the rest of their lives.

    Trump and this current “rabble” are poised to destroy this country while we sit back, talk and complain a lot, and do essentially nothing else. We have no cultural experience with this sort of threat to our democracy and are essentially flat-footed and reeling from horror to horror right now. We have to stand for what is morally right and call out those that stand for things that aren’t. To think that this “American experiment with democracy” has gotten this far and we complacently let it fall by the wayside is a horrifying prospect to ponder. It will be up to us to save this country and we’d better get cracking soon since the longer we wait the more we will have to fix and that much harder will it be to do.

    Wishful thinking will get us no where fast.

  15. Tom Lund – I am waiting eagerly for plan of action. I’m all set for 2018 and 2020 but that could be another train wreck; then what?

  16. So, what is the plan of action? Thus far I’ve read no cogent plan of action from this blog’s participants that points toward remediation of the ills, the woes, and/or the issues plaguing the Dreamer group.

  17. My argument began something to the effect:” BS! We have enough skilled labor in this country to fill our construction requirements!”… After eating MUCH CROW I hear an article on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) while driving an errand in the car – Minnesota Construction and Labor has teamed with State and County agencies to recruit Minorities and Women to work construction – and they are failing miserably. They are losing labor because a lot of it was from MEXICO… you could have knocked me over with a feather! MY Stars! both of my sons are hard working individuals both degreed and done on their own merits and work! What have we done to these past generations that people DO NOT WANT TO WORK THE HARD JOBS FOR REALLY GOOD PAY SCALES! I am aghast – had I the health and freedom I would be out adding to my retirement benefit package!

  18. Good grief people. Join your local Indivisible group or create one to take action. There are many things we have stopped and I am not giving up. Remember healthcare? We stopped that noise. We can hope for #45 to show some empathy today and for the DACA kids but don’t give up! Get active.

  19. Good grief, people, is an understatement, @AgingLGrl.

    For too long I’ve entertained the regular complaints, the many gripes, and the various wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth from the regular participants of this blog; however, I’ve yet to see a cogent plan of action to remediate, to approach these gripes and complaints in a successful manner.

    I’m beginning to think that some people enjoy cloaking themselves in misery, that some would be lost without a shroud of misery, and that some simply are unable to view our world without jaundice. If all you’re looking for is a jaundiced view of our world, that is all you will find.

  20. BSH,
    “Thus far I’ve read no cogent plan of action from this blog’s participants that points toward remediation of the ills, the woes, and/or the issues plaguing the Dreamer group.”

    I disagree. I refer you to World War II veteran Gerald and his statement “To the Bastille!” That’s the First step. What do you expect? Another focus group. We’ve had one here since Trump announced his candidacy. You couldn’t find a better one. I believe the results are in, probably not to your liking.

  21. Rather than a disagreement among friends, let’s develop a strategy and follow through on it. I agree that detesting Trump is fine but BSH is right; it is not a strategy. We need to develop a pro labor strategy which includes regulatory controls of Wall Street investments (some with our FDIC-insured funds, international finance controls, a return of Glass-Steagall (as modified with interim experience since its demise in 1999), an end to wage inequality with a living rather than a minimum wage regime, a truly progressive tax as was envisioned when it all began in 1913, and a host of other issues on which we come down in favor of the common good rather than for the continuing enrichment of the rich and corporate class, which needs no help. It is not enough to point out a demented man’s weaknesses, including his own obvious lack of coherent strategy. We have to have a positive program to present to the voters, one that gets them off the couch and into the voting booth voting their own interests. Can’t be done? That’s what they said about the election of 1936, when FDR carried 46 out of the then 48 states, the year after the Social Security Act of 1935 was passed. See any connection?

  22. I sit here; 80 years old, deaf and disabled, living on barely above the federal poverty level yearly income. As I sit here doing nothing physical, I am responding to political newsletters, filling out surveys, posting my views in response to those supporting Trump and writing checks for membership dues to:
    ACLU
    Southern Poverty Law Center
    Planned Parenthood
    NARAL
    AARP (the largest lobby for seniors)
    American Humanist Association
    Americans United for Separation of Church and State
    Indiana Coalition for Public Education
    RIPEA (retired IN public employees representative to legislature to protect our retirement funds)
    National Democratic Committee
    Indiana Democratic Party

    I am flying the Rainbow flag from my front porch. I posted the information about local CVS firing all undocumented workers when it happened, asked if anyone else was aware but got no response, not even questioning where we could get more information or take action. I have spoken to some of my Hispanic neighbors, letting them now they have my support and hoping they stay safe. They no longer venture out of their homes; blinds and drapes are drawn and the homes look deserted…but they are there. If there is a group supporting DACA locally, please let me know. I have so far seen nothing from our local government taking action; is that because Pence is now vice president and they fear repercussions…politically and/or financially? I research information posted on Facebook; if factual regarding positive actions by other groups I pass it along. If not factual; I pass along researched information to inform them of their lack of facts. I speak out loud and long against the current administration whenever and wherever I find the opportunity. My views are posted daily on this blog.

    Those of you accusing others of doing nothing, taking no action; please tell us what your plans of action are and what YOU are doing to help anyone, anywhere, on any issue, in any way. This information could bring about action.

  23. “The targets of this move are not criminals.”

    It’s worth a reminder (as a federal judge reminded Joe Arpaio), unlawful presence in the United States is not crime. Illegal entry is a federal misdemeanor, but not everyone who is unlawfully present committed illegal entry. For example, people who overstay their visas did not commit illegal entry, even though they are unlawfully present. Moreover, there’s a five-year statute of limitations for illegal entry.

  24. This blog is about issues. It’s not a recruitment or a command center. There is no effective countervailing force against the Trump Manipulators and this is not the proper place to start organizing one.

    I suggest “To the Bastille” is the First Step, it’s not a strategy or a plan of action, it’s an admission to the seriousness of the situation. Nothing more. But better than nothing.

  25. “To the Bastille” is unlikely to strike a chord of understanding or recognition with the voters who potentially lean left in the Democrat Party, to the base of the Party. Try shouting “To the Bastille” at the next organized meeting of rank and file Democrats and then gauge the reaction.

    If Democrats continue quibbling and rehashing their plethora of issues, then sooner or later some group who does have a strategy, who has a distinct mission and an intentional plan of action will assume leadership in the Party. Consider the well-organized group, BAMN (By Any Means Necessary). The Democrats’ continual parsing of issues opens the door to those groups who have ‘the answer’. It’s amazing how many people will follow a group who has ‘the answer’. And, yes, BAMN touts itself as having ‘the answer’ as well as its participation with Antifa.

    http://www.bamn.com/

  26. Senator Flake on CNN early Sunday morning stated that Trump will probably ignore his election promise to reverse this order. He says that he hopes he would do this as many presidents ignore some of their presidential campaigns promises and most likely ignore this one

  27. QUESTION…..democrats controlled the House and had 60 votes in the Senate. WHY DIDN’T THEY REFORM IMMIGRATION WHEN THEY HAD A CHANCE? The whining now is inappropriate.

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