Tell the truth. Until this past weekend you had no idea what the letters DACA stood for. You might have known they had to do with young people who entered the country as children with their parents, but what do the letters mean?
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
You're welcome.
This is a classic case of something that seems easy, until someone who knows what they are talking about explains why tipping over one domino, will make the next 1,250 dominos fall down, too.
That's true no matter which side of the DACA debate you are on.
This sprung to the top of the news cycle because Donald Trump started talking about it late last week. Why? Because, according to many, many people a group of State Attorneys General - led by the AG of Texas - had threatened to file suit in Federal court to do away with DACA by this past Tuesday.
They claim - with some strong justification - that DACA as instituted by Barack Obama in June 2012 is an Unconstitutional overreach of Executive Power. That is, the President - any President - lacks the authority to establish this type of program without an actual law adopted by Congress and signed by the President to back it up.
There is widespread agreement that DACA, notwithstanding the loftiness and benevolence of its goals, is Unconstitutional, but as the news website, Axios, pointed out yesterday "that point has never actually been decided in a federal court."
It is about to be, as Attorneys General from 16 other states (and DC) filed suit in Federal court demanding the Trump Administration be required to continue DACA, because, according to CNN,
"Trump's move � was motivated by discriminatory reasons, that it violated due process by being 'fundamentally unfair,' and that it violated laws that dictate procedures for federal regulations."
On the Congressional front, Trump said he would leave DACA where it is for six months to give the Congress a chance to work out a solution. Counting on my fingers, I see that six months from now is March 2018.
That's not enough time. It needs to be nine months, not because of the gestation period that suggests, but because it will take the whole thing to next June when the vast majority of filing deadlines will have come and gone.
Members of the House - Rs and Ds - who are secure in their gerrymandered districts will do almost anything not to draw a primary opponent especially over something as toxic as immigration policy.
We'll see if I'm right about this.
U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) demonstrated why nothing is as simple as it looks on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program when he said that just codifying DACA was not the answer because if the Dreamers were granted legal status the underlying immigration law would allow them to apply for similar status "for their parents and their siblings, then they can apply for legal status for their spouses and so forth."
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed a comprehensive immigration bill that granted legal status to 3 million previously illegal immigrants. Almost everyone agrees that led to more immigrants entering illegally hoping that they, too, would be granted amnesty.
The reality is, the vast majority of Dreamers are gainfully employed. They have lived their entire American lives knowing that getting caught doing something illegal might well result in a one-way ticket to Mexico, or Guatemala, or some other Central or South American nation.
According to the Liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress says the state in which most Dreamers live is - no surprise - California with 222,795. The state with the fewest? Bernie Sanders' own Vermont with 42.
That is not a typo. Forty. Two.
In any event, this isn't something House Speaker Paul Ryan nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needed added to an agenda that already includes money for Harvey, probably money for Irma, the debt limit vote, a budget vote, appropriations bills (or a continuing resolution), a tax bill, an infrastructure bill, and repealing and replacing Obamacare.
If the GOP Congressional leadership thought they would come back from their August recess with a clear legislative path laid out before them like a Yellow Brick Road they have been sadly disappointed.
Talk about dreamers.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Great links today. The Wikipedia entry for DACA, the Blue State AGs' lawsuit, the clip of Sen. Joe Cotton, the Reagan Amnesty Bill, and the Center for American Progress report.
The Mullfoto is of a REAL issue: A small pour of wine in Utah.
® 
