{"id":10590,"date":"2017-09-18T13:11:09","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T20:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10590"},"modified":"2017-09-18T13:11:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T20:11:09","slug":"a-little-daca-honesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-little-daca-honesty\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little DACA Honesty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Corner- The one and only.\u00a0 \/\/ National Review<\/em><\/p>\n

By Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n

It is surreal to look at more than a dozen clips of Barack Obama in non-campaign mode prior to 2012 assuring the country (\u201cI am not king\u201d) that he simply could not usurp the power of the Congress and by fiat illegally issue blanket amnesties in precisely the fashion he would in 2012 \u2014 presumably on the assumption that new polls worded along the lines of \u201cwould you deport small children brought by their parents to the country as infants\u201d showed a majority of Americans would not.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, on the basis of both short-term gain in 2012 and long-term progressive interest in creating a new demographic reality in swing states in the southwest, Obama eagerly did exactly what he had said that he could not legally do \u2014 and not with reluctance, but with the self-righteous zeal of a convert, and in condemnation of anyone morally suspect enough to have agreed with his position prior to his reelection campaign. Such is identity politics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But note his about-face came only after the fact that from January 2009 to January 2011, Obama enjoyed a large majority in the House, and until Scott Brown\u2019s election in 2010, a supermajority in the Senate, led by Harry Reid. And yet over that period, Obama did not force over the impotent objections of Republicans a DACA bill that would now have precluded the present conundrum \u2014 in the fashion in which he had successfully pushed through Obamacare without a single Republican vote.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Observers have a right to be a little skeptical about the current outrage that was not voiced against an American president in 2009\u201312, who passed on the opportunity of DACA amnesty, and added insult to injury to \u201cdreamers\u201d by asserting that his constitutional lawyering made it unethical and illegal to pass a law by fiat and circumventing the Congress \u2014 at least until he needed reelection heft.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s six-month hiatus returns the issue to constitutionality and thus back into the hands of the Congress, and presumably it seeks to avoid ad hoc court decisions or executive orders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Most Americans are not willing to grant blanket amnesty, but rather to offer in some cases legalized residence (if done constitutionally by Congress, and signed by the president) to those few hundred thousands who were brought illegally to the U.S. as minors and who have not committed a crime, are employed or in school, and are not on public assistance. I have had dozens of undocumented immigrants as students over the years, know many neighbors who are here illegally, and have personal friends without legality \u2014 and the stereotypes of those in their later twenties or early thirties who are employed or in school, speak fluent English, and are law-abiding are largely true: They are impressive people for whom a green card is a good idea.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That dispensation would leave it up to particular DACA immigrants to decide whether to enjoy renewable green-card residence or, in cases, to pay a fine (many after 18 and before DACA chose not to address their illegal status), satisfy existing requirements, and seek citizenship \u2014 a legislative compromise possible if the present aberration of massive illegal immigration is seen as a one-time lapse in the law, and we return to secure borders, credible fencing, and strict enforcement of existing immigration laws, and meritocratic, diverse, and ethnically blind legal-immigration reforms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet many doubt that the critics of the present DACA reprieve are willing to adopt the latter conditions when they can demagogue the issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Left unseen also is the elephant in the room: If DACA immigrants are seen by both sides as a particular class alone deserving of ex officio amnesties (e.g., 800,000 to 1 million?), then de facto is that a concession that other adults who willingly broke the law in entering and residing in the U.S., often through illegal agencies of document fraud and false identities, are not eligible for a similar assortment of gradated amenities? Does DACA then offer final clarity about who is and is not eligible for green-card amnesty? Or is DACA a ruse or first step to blanket amnesties for 11-15 million to come?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And we will see whether immigration protests can square the circle of harsh criticism of the U.S. (as witnessed, for example, in prior Cinco de Mayo rallies, La Raza sloganeering, and the boilerplate of ethnic-studies curricula on campus) with the overwhelming desire to stay at all costs in a country so often unfairly damned as irredeemably racist and bigoted \u2014 in order to avoid at all costs crossing the border to countries so often romanticized in the abstract.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are living in interesting but largely intellectually dishonest times.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Corner- The one and only.\u00a0 \/\/ National Review By Victor Davis Hanson It is surreal to look at more than a dozen clips of Barack Obama in non-campaign mode prior to 2012 assuring the country (\u201cI am not king\u201d) that he simply could not usurp the power of the Congress and by fiat illegally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[111,46,362,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2KO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2386,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/whats-off-the-table-in-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":0},"title":"What’s Off the Table in 2012?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What should we\u00a0not\u00a0expect during next summer\u2019s presidential campaign, given what was put off limits in 2008 and later? There is much talk about what some are perceiving as the fringe religiosity of Republican candidates such as Michele Bachman and Rick Perry. But the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":885,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-virtual-rose-garden\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Virtual Rose Garden","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online When Barack Obama went into hibernation in December and vacationed in Hawaii, we noted that his poll numbers edged back up some. His advisers probably noticed the anomaly too: that the less the people hear and see of Obama, the more they seem\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/groundhog-day-in-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":2},"title":"Groundhog Day in America","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama won a moderately close victory over Mitt Romney on Tuesday. But oddly, nothing much has changed. The country is still split nearly 50\/50. There is still a Democratic president, and an almost identically Democratic Senate at war with an identically Republican\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-hope-and-change-to-fear-ad-smear\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":3},"title":"From Hope and Change to Fear ad Smear","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-bush-be\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":4},"title":"Let Bush Be","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The theme of the president's 2012 re-election campaign is that George W. Bush left such a terrible mess that Barack Obama could hardly be expected to clean it up in four years. In other words, 43 months of unemployment rates above 8 percent,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7805,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-madness-of-2008\/","url_meta":{"origin":10590,"position":5},"title":"The Madness of 2008","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A nation became unhinged by trivialities like \u201chope and change.\u201d It has now awakened. \u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"On the campaign trail, October 2008 (Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/pic_giant_082614_SM_Barack-Obama-2008-G.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10591,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10590\/revisions\/10591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}