Dismantle DACA Once and for All
... Recent reports make clear, however, that DACA will be first on the agenda as Congress returns to work this month.
For their part, Democrats are thrilled..
... the rhetoric, and the policy hardly reflect reality.
For starters, a majority of DACA recipients aren’t young people. They’re adults, between the ages of 21 and 25.
... less than half of current DACA recipients have a high school education, despite a majority of them being adults. Moreover, an ongoing study by Harvard researcher Roberto G. Gonzalez found that, among the DACA recipients enrolled in high school, the dropout rate is nearly four times the national average. Likewise, only 20 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree, compared to about 32 percent of Americans who do....
DACA itself does not require English fluency for an application. According to one study, 46 percent of DACA recipients have only basic English ability, and 24 percent of the DACA-eligible population is functionally illiterate.
... In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that one-fifth of DACA-eligible illegal [alien] immigrants will be on food stamps in the next 10 years, costing taxpayers nearly $26 billion.
DACA recipients have also proven to be a troubling security threat....
In May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested three DACA immigrants in a nationwide sweep of gangs, and announced that approximately 1,500 DACA recipients had their deferred status terminated due to “criminality or gang affiliation concerns.”
By August, that number had reached 2,139.
It is clear that DACA, as a policy, has been a failure...
President Trump in 2016 ran on the idea that DACA was a lawless and insufficient remedy to a deep and fundamental problem. Congressional Republicans did the same. A collective amnesia on the part of Republicans will not only hurt them in the 2018 midterms and it will damage the party’s remaining credibility for decades, if not generations....