Dreamers Are Us: What will President Mitt Romney do about DREAMers?
What will President Mitt Romney do about DREAMers?
Path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is a mirage: Unless the apocalypse happens before election day, I am 100% positive that President Barack Obama will be reelected. Then, the DREMers can hope that the DACA program will be renewed. There is also hope that the president might provide further help to them and other undocumented immigrants already in the country by executive orders (though they are not permanent). Comprehensive immigration reform will definitely not happen because Democrats are unlikely to have majorities in Congress to do that. In any case, many immigrants fail to realize that at this time Americans are simply not united in their support for an amnesty to illegal immigrants. About two in five Americans support giving a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants but at the same time, almost three in five supported the Arizona "show me your papers" laws. The support for DACA was by a two-to-one margin. Due to this conflicted positions among the minds of voters, and very strong opposition to any amnesty among the GOP lawmakers, the most that is likely is a version of Marco Rubio vision of a long-term non-immigrant visa for those who came as children and have excelled in education, served in the Military, and stayed away from criminal activities. They will not be eligible for standard green cards. It is also clear that all other illegal immigrants will continue to live the way they are. Unfortunately many advocates of these causes are merely keeping themselves in business by lobbying for reform creating hope but the reality is that as much as some Democrats have the political will, there just aren't enough votes in Congress, and as American economy stays in a long-term slump, more and more Americans will oppose any addition to the pool of people eligible for government benefits like Social Security and Medicare.
Mitt Romney may kill DACA: A lot of you have been wondering -- and some of you have been wondering so much that you have not even applied for DACA -- what will happen to the deferrals on deportations and the work permits were Romney to be elected to the White House. I have hypothesized that while as the president, Mitt Romney will have to legal authority to shut down the program and invalidate deferrals and work permits. Contrary to what many DREAMers wrongly believe, there are no guarantees that their authorization to work cannot be revoked or that they cannot be deported (in fact, as many people have been saying, deportations will be a lot easier with all the information about the applicants in the databases, including the fingerprints). The probability of that happening is relatively low, though, unless the courts declare the program to be unconstitutional. The political fallout from that will be huge, so Romney might simply let the program die.