Editorial: Ending DACA a misguided effort toward immigration reform

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Those final lines of "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus are stamped into a bronze plaque displayed at the Statue of Liberty museum in New York Harbor. For more than a century they have stood as our nation's invitation to those fleeing persecution, war, famine, genocide and other ills we as Americans have largely watched play out on distant shores.

On Tuesday, though, President Donald Trump sent an entirely different message to the most vulnerable population brought to the United States in search of a better life:

Sit down, kid.

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced that it would rescind the Obama-era order that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which currently shields nearly 800,000 young immigrants — including an estimated 17,000 in Colorado — from deportation.

And in typical Trump "ready, fire, aim" approach, the president gave Congress a six-month window to replace or preserve a program that allows children brought into the country as undocumented immigrants to pursue the only life many have ever known.

Not that Congress is blameless here, either. President Barack Obama passed DACA in 2012 as a stopgap to address the U.S. immigration crisis until Congress acted on meaningful immigration reform.

It's 2017. We're still waiting.

But since the nation's registered childhood arrivals find themselves in the crosshairs of our lingering debate on immigration policy, here are a few things to know about the so-called DREAMers, courtesy of information they voluntarily provide to the Department of Homeland Security:

• The average age of a DREAMer is 25.
• 97 percent are employed or in school.
• 91 percent have a job.
• 45 percent attend high school or college.
• 0.05 percent of enrollees violate the act and are deported.

These aren't the "bad hombres" Trump pledged to rid the U.S. of during his presidential campaign.

These are young people raised on American values and American culture, who came here before June 2007. None of them had turned 16 when they entered the country.

They are people like Brithany Gutierrez, a Colorado State University junior who in November told the Coloradoan she feared for her future should Trump make good on his campaign promise to end DACA.

Gutierrez has lived in Northern Colorado for most of her life after her family came with a visa to care for her ailing grandfather. When that visa expired, her family stayed. She was 8 at the time.

For Gutierrez, deportation would be devastating.

"I don’t know Mexico," she told the Coloradoan. "I mean, I remember it, but it’s changed a lot. I don’t know people from Mexico."

This is the problem some members of the Coloradoan Editorial Board have with ending DACA: It does little more than punish a select group of children for the actions of their parents.

The board is split on this issue, for certain. Our nation's patchwork immigration policy is the result of decades of congressional inaction from both sides of the aisle. While we find Trump's approach flawed, we do recognize the need for action. 

Members of this board just aren't sold that ending DACA is the right starting point.

For this reason, we urge Colorado's congressional delegation to support legislation to replace DACA only if it provides a clear path to citizenship for the 800,000 DREAMers working to be responsible, productive members of our society. 

The Dream Act of 2017, co-sponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner, would achieve that goal. The bipartisan solution would grant DREAMers a pathway to permanent residence, given they meet certain requirements related to educational attainment, workforce activity and English and U.S. history proficiency.

The deportation of one DREAMer who had no control over being illegally brought to the U.S. would be one deportation too many.

Ending DACA might open job opportunities for documented Americans, should 800,000 potential workers be taken out of the national market. But it will not stop the flow of illegal entry into our country. Nor will it target those who fail to "play by the rules."

It will, however, add grave uncertainty to the lives of 201,000 enrollees who will see their protections expire this year. Another 275,000 enrollments will expire in 2018.

If there is any silver lining to his decision, it's that Trump has pledged that DACA recipients "are not enforcement priorities unless they are criminals, are involved in criminal activity, or are members of a gang."

The vast majority of DACA enrollees are none of these things. What they are now is a generation of immigrants selected by the White House to serve as a bludgeon to get Congress to act on immigration. Act now, because it'll be on your conscience if they suffer.

DREAMers have been raised on American values and are pursuing American dreams, but they are not Americans.

Unfortunately, that won't stop our lawmakers from treating them like pawns to be sacrificed in our ongoing immigration stalemate.

This is the viewpoint of the Coloradoan Editorial Board, made up of six community members and Coloradoan News Director Eric Larsen and Watchdog Coach Rebecca Powell. The board meets weekly to set the topic and direction of the Coloradoan's Sunday editorials. News reporters are not involved in the editorial board process.