Sunday, September 3, 2017

DACA: Changing Attitudes Towards Immigrants and Who May Enter USA

Nadene Goldfoot                                            
   
Since about 2000, the USA, with a population this year of 326,474,013,  has noticed that arrivals of children from their southern border of Mexico,  population of 130, 222, 815, have been entering illegally with no border guards stopping them.  They've been coming by the busloads from ages 1 to 17, some of which have been pregnant.  Out of one batch of 764, 236 were Hondurans.  The number of recent illegals has reached 800,000.  That would be the population of 2 (two) Portland, Oregon made up only of children.  They have first come into Texas, and then bussed elsewhere in many cases to Arizona and California, for example.  This has put a great strain on these states economically and every other which way, especially on school districts who never have enough money to help their public schools as they were before illegals arrived.  Many have arrived alone and others with parents, all illegally.
                                                                           
"The three buses were trailed by a half-dozen news crews during the two-hour trip from the border to Murietta. After the buses were blocked, federal authorities rerouted the vehicles to a freeway and then to a customs and border facility in San Diego within view of the Mexico border."....."DHS (Dept. of Human Services)  grapples with the crowds streaming across the border from Mexico. Processing facilities that are supposed to screen immigrants for health, criminal history and legal status are reportedly so overwhelmed that they are sending illegal immigrants by buses and planes around the country, looking for places to hold them while they are processed.
                                                                                 
The DREAM ACT (Development Relief Education for Alien Minors) was a failed proposal in Congress on August 1, 2001  to deal with these children and parents.  The children involved are still being called THE DREAMERS.   It has failed ever since.  It was a breach in our immigrant policy to make an exception which did not involve a dire necessity such as being of refugee status.

But for the Jews, there was no exception.  Some attempted to enter from the ship, St. Louis. "On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 937 passengers. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from eastern Europe, and a few were officially "stateless."

Back then, the USA had quotas.   "In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years."                                                                       
                                                                           
Children on St. Louis, a ship that was turned back
900 Jews were on this ship.
USA's population then was 130.9 million
Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 
I might add that Jews trying to escape Hitler's Germany in the late 1930's were not given any special status to enter the USA, either.  Other countries would not take in Jews because they weren't baptized, of course.  It wasn't even a kind way of showing their anti-Semitism in not accepting Jews.  Even a few ships that made it to the shore of the USA were turned back and the passengers were returned to face the ovens.   Now we have been receiving refugees from the Middle Eastern countries at war with each other, such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon along with illegals that have been entering from Mexico.  Mexico's illegal entrants have been diminishing with a change of policy and President Trump's plan of building a wall between the countries.  The dangers these children face in Mexico and Central America are the drug gangs that their countries cannot control.
                                                                       


The question about the DREAMERS centers around children born after June 16, 1981 who came to the USA before age 16.
They must be free of any criminal record.
They have been in the USA since June 15, 2007 and are attending school.

" DACA allows certain illegal immigrants who entered the country as minors, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and eligibility for a work permit. This was created by " the Obama administration in June 2012." when he allowed busloads of children to be brought into the USA as illegals.  
                                                                     
Not all junior high students are grateful for the
education they are offered.
It takes a strong principal of a school to change behaviors 

"The policy was created after acknowledgment that these illegal students had been largely raised in the United States, and was seen as a way to remove immigration enforcement attention from "low priority" individuals with good behavior. The illegal immigrant student population was rapidly increasing; approximately 65,000 illegal immigrant students graduate from U.S. high schools on a yearly basis.
From the start, the Pew Research Center estimated that up to 1.7 million people might be eligible. As of June 2016, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) had received 844,931 initial applications for DACA status, of which 741,546 (88%) were approved, 60,269 (7%) were denied, and 43,121 (5%) were pending. Over half of those accepted reside in California and Texas."
                                                                                                   
 
In November 2014, Obama tried to expand the program, but the involved states protested. 
On June 16, 2017, the United States Department of Homeland Security announced that it

 would rescind the executive order by the Barack Obama administration that expanded the
 DACA program, though the DACA program's overall existence would continue to be 
reviewed.  Trump became President on January 20, 2017, and now is facing a big decision he
must make about DACA; to send these people back or allow them to stay.  Part of his platform
was to follow the law of the land and  send them back.  

"U.S. immigration law is very complex, and there is much confusion as to how it works. The Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), the body of law governing current immigration policy, provides for an annual worldwide limit of 675,000 permanent immigrants, with certain exceptions for close family members.Aug 12, 2016

Reference:  https://unitedwedream.org/about/projects/deferred-action/
http://www.denverpost.com/2012/06/15/illegal-immigrant-children-brought-to-u-s-get-break-from-deportation/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DREAM_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_Action_for_Childhood_Arrivals
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/child-migrants-surge-unaccompanied-central-america/
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/06/06/arizona-illegal-immigrant-children-brewer/10113105/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/02/protesters-in-california-block-busloads-of-immigrant-children-and-families/?utm_term=.ca974280a662
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/10/politics/children-immigrant-crossings/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/02/us/california-immigrant-transfers/index.html
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/01/30/1939-refugees-st-louis-manifest
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/how-united-states-immigration-system-works

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