Many immigrants who come to Texas have made their way to the United States in hopes of a better life. Also termed as the Dreamers, there has been a proposed directed allowance for these children who were given no choice in coming to the U.S. that once included a full course path to U.S. citizenship. However, the Dreamers may now be facing an insurmountable obstacle to that achievement with the recent ruling by a federal judge that the DACA program is actually unconstitutional with respect to the way it is currently designed. This ruling will assuredly send Congress back to the drawing board regarding the issue.
How DACA has worked
The term DACA stands for Deferred Action against Childhood Arrivals and is an immigration order directed at children who were brought to the United States and have lived here since that time. Many of these immigrant children are undocumented and would have been deported under the prior law. The DACA program has blocked that deportation possibility when the targeted individual meets certain qualification criteria revolving around education and lawful behavior while residing in the country.
The next step for Congress after the ruling
The recent federal court ruling has presented a dilemma for DACA program advocates, and especially for Congress. As the ruling reads, the primary hope for continuing the deportation blockage will be the obscure “reconciliation” route that could possibly be used to get new legislation passed without Republican support for adding new immigration law policy in the wake of what is being called a crisis at the Texas and Arizona border.
Sen. Lindsay Graham is already on record as stating the Republican representatives and senators will be resilient to any new immigration policy regardless of what alterations are made by Congress. And once again, even with the new policy, there will be more court challenges.