Sunspots (https://sunspots.cornellsun.com/tag/daca/)
With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democratic viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just to present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!
President Donald Trump is in many ways the antithesis of former President Barack Obama. In the beginning months of his presidency, Trump has attempted to do away with many of Obama’s signature policies, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Paris Climate Accord, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Trump’s recent decision to end DACA has come under fire for endangering childhood illegal immigrants. Much of this criticism, however, is misguided, since the termination of DACA restores the limiting of Constitutional powers while motivating Congress to pass robust immigration reform. DACA was introduced by Obama after the Senate failed to pass the DREAM Act—legislation that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for alien minors.
Since Trump rescinded the DREAM Act a few days ago, a number of articles have appeared on the internet citing the extreme cruelty of his decision. Many of these articles make their point by showing a Hispanic male in their early 20s doing something admirable—graduating as Valedictorian from high school, saving people’s lives during Hurricane Harvey, researching a cure for cancer—and juxtaposing it with the inevitable fate Trump has forced upon them just to gain a few political points: being deported to a country they have never known. While all DREAMers are skilled workers with no criminal record who have little memory of their country of origin, in many respects this picture is highly inaccurate. It exemplifies the tendency of our media to make its readers complacent by not painting an issue with stark, clear strokes, but rather a blurry impressionism that elicits emotion rather than a logical response. In this article, I will explain why Trump’s rescission of the DREAM Act is significantly more damaging to the soul of this nation than the media would have you believe, by repudiating these headlines piece by piece.