Speaker 1: Um Greg's store in Washington, with June Grasso in New York,
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Bloomberg Law. I'm here today to
Speaker 1: announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated
Speaker 1: under the Obama administration is being rescinded. With those words,
Speaker 1: Attorney General Jeff Sessions heralded the apparent end of the
Speaker 1: Dreamer program and its protection for eight hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: who entered the US illegally as children. Under DACA, those
Speaker 1: people were shielded from deportation and could get work permits.
Speaker 1: The program will be phased out, so no one's status
Speaker 1: will be changed for six at least six months at
Speaker 1: the period that, in theory at least could let Congress
Speaker 1: address the status of the Dreamers. With us to talk
Speaker 1: about the implications of today's announcement is David Beer. He's
Speaker 1: a policy analyst at the Cato Institute. And Margaret Korean,
Speaker 1: he's executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. David,
Speaker 1: let's just start with the nuts and bolts of this.
Speaker 1: Tell us how this phase out is going to work. Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna work on a sort of rolling basis, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna have people losing their DOCTA permits um on
Speaker 1: a ongoing basis, So it's not all going to happen
Speaker 1: at once in six months. Rather, people's renewals will come up.
Speaker 1: They get a two year permit to work and live
Speaker 1: legally in the United States. That permit will expire at
Speaker 1: some point, and based on the numbers from the government, UH,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much gonna have some people being able to
Speaker 1: stay in their DOCTA status until uh, some people will
Speaker 1: lose their DOCCA status in and some people will lose
Speaker 1: their DOCTA status. So it all depends on when you
Speaker 1: first received your doctor permit. And just David, quickly, just
Speaker 1: as I know you've looked at the numbers, are are
Speaker 1: most of the people in the status where they're gonna
Speaker 1: lose lose uh, their rights start in six months. So
Speaker 1: actually you're gonna have about six of the people currently
Speaker 1: in the program will continue to have status uh through
Speaker 1: nine teams through all of next year, they will continue
Speaker 1: to have status and then it will you know, quickly
Speaker 1: expire after that. So President Trump has signed more than
Speaker 1: forty executive orders, ranging from stopping immigrants from some Muslim
Speaker 1: countries from entering the US to stopping transgender people from
Speaker 1: serving in the military. So, David, how can the Attorney
Speaker 1: General Sessions say that President Obama's executive action on DAKA
Speaker 1: was unconstitutional? Well, it's certainly inconsistent in terms of the
Speaker 1: theory of executive power. That's being employed in one area
Speaker 1: is not being employed in in the same way in
Speaker 1: another area. And Uh, you know, the the DACA program
Speaker 1: has existed for sinceve so we have over five years
Speaker 1: with that program. Other programs of a similar nature existed
Speaker 1: under the H. W. Bush administration, that George W. Bush administration.
Speaker 1: You've had these types of deferred action programs for select
Speaker 1: groups of of unauthorized immigrants going back many years. And
Speaker 1: it really doesn't seem any different, uh today, except that
Speaker 1: the administration disagrees with the program on policy merits Mark,
Speaker 1: let's bring you into this, um. So, Jeff Sessions kept
Speaker 1: talking today about the rule of law and in his
Speaker 1: view that DACCA is unconstitutional. If that's the case, does
Speaker 1: it does it make sense to let this program go
Speaker 1: on even for six months. Shouldn't administration have ended it immediately? Well,
Speaker 1: the administration should have ended it in January when it
Speaker 1: took over, and the President has pledged to abolish it
Speaker 1: on day once. So the answer is yes, um, but
Speaker 1: you also have to deal with practical reality, and what
Speaker 1: they seem to be doing here is trying to create
Speaker 1: a soft landing for the doctor. This is what the
Speaker 1: sit and also create a grace period for Congress to
Speaker 1: actually um put together legislation to properly legalize them. So
Speaker 1: so the answer is yeah, ideally this never should have
Speaker 1: existed in the first place. But like any other um
Speaker 1: unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power by the executive, you have
Speaker 1: to deal with the facts that have been created and
Speaker 1: try to unwind the illegal act um, because that's the
Speaker 1: predn way to deal with it, rather than simply um
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, abolish it altogether turned into
Speaker 1: a punk. I mean they could, but you know, prudence
Speaker 1: demands that you have to deal with the facts that
Speaker 1: you inherit, not the facts that you wish you and inherit.
Speaker 1: David in just about thirty seconds. Would this have happened
Speaker 1: if attorneys general in ten conservative states hadn't threatened a
Speaker 1: legal challenge to the program, Uh, if it continued beyond
Speaker 1: September five, giving Trump a political deadline, he was pretty
Speaker 1: obvious that it would not have happened. And so what
Speaker 1: you're referring to as a letter led by Texas Attorney
Speaker 1: General Uh to the administration saying that we will file
Speaker 1: a lawsuit challenging this deferred action program, the doctor program,
Speaker 1: if you do not end it by September five. And
Speaker 1: here we are on September five, they're announcing the end
Speaker 1: of the program. The Trump administration has announced it will
Speaker 1: phase out the Obama Doctor Program, which applied to a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand young people who entered the US illegally as children.
Speaker 1: Those so called dreamers have been able to live free
Speaker 1: from the threat of deportation and with the right to
Speaker 1: hold down jobs. Here's how Atorney General Jeff Sessions defended
Speaker 1: the decision. We are people of compassion, and we are
Speaker 1: people of law, but there's nothing compassionate about the failure
Speaker 1: to enforce immigration laws. Enforcing the law saves lives for
Speaker 1: tax communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering. Mark, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about those comments from Jeff Session.
Speaker 1: As you know, a lot of these people came here
Speaker 1: as very young children. Some of them can't even remember
Speaker 1: the country they came from. When I heard him talk
Speaker 1: about compassion, I heard him talking entirely about people who
Speaker 1: are legally in the US, and not any of the dreamers,
Speaker 1: not compassion towards them. Did you hear anything different, Well, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't think he was talking about either
Speaker 1: legal or at le on other words, I think from
Speaker 1: what you was saying in that comment was that when
Speaker 1: you have a clear, consistent rules that are that are
Speaker 1: consistently enforced, you make sure that people abroad know what
Speaker 1: to expect. Whereas the reason we have this situation with
Speaker 1: the doccas is that we have immigration laws that, for
Speaker 1: various political and financial interests, have made sure that we
Speaker 1: don't enforce them. So we have laws on the books
Speaker 1: that are then poorly enforced, and you end up with
Speaker 1: a situation where, for instance, you have uh, several hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people who came here as young children, um, some
Speaker 1: of them teenagers, but a lot of them as young
Speaker 1: children who grew up here. Well, the only reason that
Speaker 1: was even possible is because we let the immigration law
Speaker 1: go unenforced for so long that people ended up just
Speaker 1: being able to stay. And the lesson of this whole
Speaker 1: docta business is that you need to have clear, consistent
Speaker 1: immigration laws that are enforced so that you don't entice
Speaker 1: people to come here illegally, and you make sure that
Speaker 1: those who do come are found and returned expeditiously, rather
Speaker 1: than um allowed able to stay for years and years
Speaker 1: and end up in the kind of situation we keep today. David,
Speaker 1: this is supposed to be an orderly transition, and yet
Speaker 1: you have a situation where the DACA recipients are almost
Speaker 1: in a worse situation than illegal immigrants because all their
Speaker 1: information has been given to the government and if if
Speaker 1: they want to get them at some point in the future,
Speaker 1: they have that information. So and it's also seems very
Speaker 1: not it doesn't seem very orderly when it's happening on this,
Speaker 1: on this every three months. You know, things may happen.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't seem like it's an orderly process. Well,
Speaker 1: it's certainly going to be chaotic for the businesses that
Speaker 1: have to fire over seven twenty thousand people really on
Speaker 1: a you know, four hundred people week are going to
Speaker 1: be fired. They're gonna have to, uh, you know, expend
Speaker 1: enormous amount of resources trying to replace those people. That
Speaker 1: money comes directly out of the paychecks of other workers
Speaker 1: at those businesses as well as the the payments that
Speaker 1: they received from consumers. So yes, it's it's going to
Speaker 1: be orderly from the standpoint of the government. Because the
Speaker 1: government doesn't have to do hardly anything. They can just
Speaker 1: rely on these businesses to have to go around and
Speaker 1: police their workforces and fire these people. I don't think
Speaker 1: that the Trump administration is going to immediately start targeting
Speaker 1: all of these uh, doctor recipients, and that's simply because
Speaker 1: of the fact that they don't have the resources to
Speaker 1: deport everyone in the United States, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there are enough people that they can catch in other
Speaker 1: ways that they can really ramp up enforcement without going
Speaker 1: after the doctor recipients immediately. Now down the line, certain
Speaker 1: ones of them will asolutely be disadvantaged as a result
Speaker 1: of this and be deported. Um, but I don't think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a blanket policy of going after them. Mark.
Speaker 1: The administration left up in the possibility that Congress could
Speaker 1: act in the six month period to address the status
Speaker 1: of the doctor recipients. Do you see any realistic chance
Speaker 1: that that this Congress could actually put together something that
Speaker 1: would address this issue from a legislative standpoint, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. I mean, they didn't just leave the possibility open.
Speaker 1: That's what that six months. The great period is for
Speaker 1: is for Congress to get on the stick. If they
Speaker 1: had done this in January when the President said he
Speaker 1: was going to do it and given them say to
Speaker 1: the end of this year, they would have a longer period.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think it's clearly enough time because they
Speaker 1: don't need to put together some vast thousand page bill
Speaker 1: like the Gang of Eight fiasco from several years ago.
Speaker 1: They need legislation that does one thing, and that is
Speaker 1: legalize the doctas who were already a finite population. They
Speaker 1: know who they are, and as part of that, mitigate
Speaker 1: damage that any amnesty like that would do. So they
Speaker 1: would have to include and enforcement measures, specifically mandating the
Speaker 1: de Verify system, which is an online system businesses can
Speaker 1: use to make sure that people they hire are telling
Speaker 1: the truth about who they are. And they'd have to
Speaker 1: get rid of some of the legal immigration categories to
Speaker 1: prevent the relatives of these amnesty recipients, who knew what
Speaker 1: they were doing when they came they were adults them
Speaker 1: from being able to benefit. I want to give David
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds to say whether he agrees whether Congress can
Speaker 1: actually act in this time. Congress can certainly act within
Speaker 1: this period of time. Uh, it seems unlikely if they're
Speaker 1: going to try to take up the sort of bargain
Speaker 1: that Mark has put forward. Okay, I want to thank
Speaker 1: our guests, Mark Retkorean David Beer talking about the Trump
Speaker 1: administration's decision to phase out the DACA program. Uh, thanks
Speaker 1: for being with us on bloomberg Loft.