Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned in a recent hearing that President Trump will not be lenient on illegal immigrants, including beneficiaries of the DACA program, unless they offer a “unique benefit” to America.
The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on Wednesday called “Dream Deferred: The Urgent Need to Protect Immigrant Youth” that emphasized the need for passing legal protections for noncitizens brought into the United States as children. “Dreamers” can secure work permits and avoid deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. However, DACA does not offer green cards and there is presently no path to citizenship through the initiative.
During the hearing, Mr. Graham said that “if President Trump wins, I predict, I’m not going to speak for him, but unless you really truly have a unique benefit to the country or an unusual humanitarian situation, you’re going to be kicked out. There are millions of people here who have just been waved into the country,” he said.
According to data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), there were over 530,000 active DACA recipients in the country as of Dec. 31, 2023. The vast majority, more than 429,000 of them, are from Mexico, followed by Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia.
At the hearing, Tom Wong, an associate professor of political science and founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego, recommended providing a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers,” saying this will “significantly improve the American economy.”
“According to one estimate, dreamers contribute an estimated $45 billion to the U.S. economy each year through their wages and pay $13 billion annually in combined federal, state, and local taxes. A pathway to citizenship would allow undocumented young people to participate more fully and more productively in the labor force,” he said.
However, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), warned against the idea.
“It would be a grave mistake for Congress to give consideration to an amnesty or legalization program, either for DACA recipients or any other group of illegal aliens, at this time when the government does not have operational control of the border and is catching and releasing illegal migrants on a mass scale,” she said.
After DACA was implemented, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) reported a “significant increase in the number of illegal aliens being apprehended at the southern border,” including unaccompanied minors.
“The general awareness of the DACA program, the push for a large-scale amnesty in 2013, and Barack Obama’s attempt to enact a similar amnesty by executive fiat in 2014 likely contributed to an impression among illegal migrants that an amnesty that would cover their children, if not their entire family, was very likely to be enacted in the near future.”
The influx only dropped off in 2017 under the Trump administration. Ms. Vaughan accused DACA of displacing legal American workers from employment opportunities, adding to the cost of public welfare and assistance programs, and providing deportation protection to criminals.
Imposing DACA in America
The DACA program was created unilaterally by President Obama in 2012 through an executive order without any legislation. After President Trump came to power, he announced in 2017 that he would end DACA. However, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the bid in 2020.Earlier in 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted that DACA “was implemented unilaterally to great controversy and legal concern after Congress rejected legislative proposals to extend similar benefits on numerous occasions to this same group of illegal aliens.”
“In other words, the executive branch, through DACA, deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions. Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.”
He blamed the DACA policy for contributing to a surge in unaccompanied minors at the southern border. The program “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.”
“It’s common sense: people who break our laws should not reap the benefits of public programs intended for lawful citizens,” he said at the time.
