President Donald Trump announced his intention to discontinue the Deferred Action in Childhood Arrivals program—an Obama administration program created in 2012— possibly affecting 690,000 young people in America.
For those that are not aware of what this program entails, it is essentially young undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. under the age of 16 from being immediately deported, allowing them to remain in the U.S. with the right to work legally for two years.
President Trump’s reasons to discontinue this program is to open up more jobs to Americans and cut down on people who come to the United States illegally.
However, discontinuing this program, especially now, could possibly lead to more trouble than it is worth considering the time and resources that would be spent on chucking the program and getting everyone deported to open up jobs that Americans don’t really need or want.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of June 2017 job listings were
calculated at 6.2 million available positions.
As of August, there are recorded 4.4 million unemployed members of the population including and the disabled and people who cannot work.
This means that there would still be 2.2 million jobs open even if every unemployed person were to go out and get a job.
If the concern is what these young undocumented Americans are doing while in the U.S, the program has certain requirements for them while they are here.
They are expected to attend school and work and if they don’t or if they commit a crime they will have to return back to their country.
But let’s say Congress agrees to get rid of the program. What would this mean for everyone in America?
It is impossible to really know, but one thing is certain: all of the undocumented immigrants that have accumulated in America over the past five years under the program will be expected return back to their country immediately.
Imagine being a student thousands of dollars in debt, or a parent working a low wage job and then being expected to just pick up and move back to a country of origin in which you may have no connections.
It would seem nearly impossible.
So, in light of this, many of these undocumented immigrants will not leave because they can’t, which in turn will be a problem for the justice system.
If the immigrants cannot leave, the government’s money and resources will have to be spent ensuring that the people who were in the U.S. under the program are leaving when they are supposed to.
Instead of focusing their time, resources and money on something that has not been much of a problem until now, the government could be focusing its attention on what it plans to do about the death and destruction following the two major hurricanes, Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma, that hit Texas and the East coast just
recently.
It is reasonable for a President to want to cut down on people entering the country illegally, but the timing and the way in which President Trump is executing his plans could not be worse.
