The Trump administration appears determined to kill off the idea of the United States as a land of promise, opportunity and equality for all. With a stroke of his pen, the president has potentially exiled hundreds of thousands of young people in the United States to a life in the shadows. Their crime? Coming to America as children.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program – which Trump ended on Tuesday – offered temporary reprieve from deportation to nearly 800,000 unauthorized immigrants who entered this country before the age of 16. By repealing it, Trump and his administration sent a signal that they are dead set on deporting not only Daca recipients but the American Dream itself. I would be infuriated if I weren’t so sad.
For those currently benefiting from the program, this decision will mean the inability to open a bank account, the fear of riding public transportation lest they be stopped by the authorities, the difficulty of renting an apartment without showing their tax returns, the impossibility of holding a legal job. Daca recipients can do all of those things now. Soon, they will be living lives of deliberate social and economic marginalization.
While it’s true that Trump has punted his decision to Congress, which now has six months to decide the fate of these young people, it’s just as true that Congress, that graveyard of commonsense reform, has already proven itself unable to solve this quandary. It was because of Congress’s failure, after all, that Obama crafted the program to begin with.
By repealing this protection when no alternative is in place, the Trump administration seems resolved to harden the hearts of Americans, pitting us needlessly against one another while jackhammering at the cement that desperately holds our nation together. Trump’s policies depress me to no end, but what bothers me most is not these efforts. What distresses me most is when they succeed in tearing us apart.
Because Donald Trump often looks and acts like a buffoon, we treat his administration as if it’s a farce. But it’s a tragedy. And it’s a tragedy of our own making. In his often-incoherent grabs for power, Trump may be hastening the demise of the liberal order in the United States, but the signs have long been there for all to see, even before Trump.
From its inception under Obama, Daca has left undocumented minors far too vulnerable. The so-called ‘war on terror” produces so much blanket suspicion on all things Muslim that earlier this year we were actually arguing about whether we should let Muslim grandmothers into the country. Think about that for a moment.
The United States also has a confused sense of how receptive it is to refugees. While the US was the top country for refugee resettlement in 2016, the US public has for the last 60 years generally opposed welcoming refugees, regardless of whether they’re from Hungary, Cuba or Syria.
And perhaps most relevant of all, too many Americans believe the myth that their ancestors entered “legally” while so many of today’s immigrants enter “illegally.” Well, the truth is not so simple.
Until the 1920s, Europeans who came to the United States could just show up, without a visa, and were generally admitted. After the 1920s, there were also relatively easy avenues available to people to adjust their status while remaining in the country, even if they had entered without authorization. Those possibilities basically ended in 1965, and the consequence of this change has directly fed our current immigration challenges.
I, too, am an immigrant to this country. I have been fingerprinted, questioned, and held at its borders. I’ve been through its byzantine immigration process, and I have survived it all to find a mostly welcoming nation on the other side.
In my capacity as a writer, I’ve had the good fortune to travel all over this country, and I’ve always been impressed with the authentic generosity and warm hospitality of Americans when you meet them in person. Yet, I’ve also been struck by the seemingly endless need in the American character to punish abstract others, both foreign and domestic. Ending Daca is one of these cases.
We have choices as to the type of nation we want to be. Are we a welcoming people who prize compassion and enable opportunity, or are we a country that sees threats everywhere and is constantly poised to respond with damnable cruelty?
The Trump administration continues to pull us toward the crueler aspects of our character. I suspect they see this as a way of shoring up their diminishing support. But we, the people, can’t succumb to such disgraceful entreaties.
They’re trying not to lose their base. We, on the other hand, must do everything we can not to lose the soul of this proud immigrant nation.
- Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America