America’s ability to lead the world has been dictated to a great extent by how meticulously it has managed to attain unity in diversity unde rit’s presidential system. This keeps it stable and strong enough to make America turn into a land of opportunities for it’s citizens. It’s pluralistic culture endowed it with a composed outlook over the world’s political spectrum.
However, President Trump has gone against the rich American legacy of accommodating plurality by planning to end the policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and deporting 800,000 young immigrants. DACA is “an American immigration policy that allowed some individuals who entered the country as minors, and had either entered or remained in the country illegally, to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and to be eligible for a work.”
President Obama enacted DACA through an executive authority in 2012. It did not guarantee any citizenship to children of illegal immigrants but provided them with a chance to stop fearing deportation and pursue their dreams of living a better life.
With a Republican-dominated Congress and a Republican President on the same page, there is no gainsaying the fact that DACA will be rescinded soon. The reason put forward so far behind its cancellation is that illegal immigrants pose a threat to the US.The ‘threat’, according to Trump, is that they steal jobs from out of work White Americans, an audience to Trump primarily panders. The reality is somewhat different.
American society has been envied across the globe for its pluralistic values. It needs to hold on to this tradition in the face of Trump admin’s Xenophophobic policies
While I was talking to one of my friends from the Hispanic immigrants’ community in the US about DACA on Facebook, she told me that the public opinion being generated by Trump through a set of reasons tainted with xenophobia was nonsensical. She was saying that immigrants had no citizenship right now and were doing all those chores to make a living which needed a lot of toil, with a low pay in return, and which native Americans did not want to join. Moreover, Trump’s move to kick these immigrants out in such a ruthless manner spoke volumes about how indifferent he was to the misery these immigrants had escaped from back in their native countries.
With a sense of gratitude towards Obama, she, as a DACA recipient, said that DACA had changed her life altogether. She said that through DACA she could see a better future for her in the US. As a matter of fact, DACA has a huge impact on the immigrant community across America. According to statistical reports about the impact of DACA on immigrants, 95 percent of immigrants are either working or in school because of DACA. 63 percent of immigrants have got a better paying job. 54 percent bought their first car. 48% got a job with better working conditions. And, 12 percent bought their first home.
The US is currently going through turbulent times not only within, as is reflective from xenophobic tendencies driving rescinding of DACA, but also without, as can be witnessed in unruly nature of North Korea towards the US in its nuclear pursuit. Thanks to being led by someone known as a living-embodiment-of-lunacy: Donald Trump. As aptly put by Senator Bernie Sanders, the US presidents throughout history have one theme in common and that is they make sure how to accommodate diversity. President Trump is the sole president who is hell bent upon pressing all those triggers that can divide the US on the basis of religion, race and fear. In his moves like barring Muslims from entering the country and rescinding DACA with the motto “Make America Great Again”. This is a preview for the implosion of American society which is envied across the globe for its pluralistic values. American society needs to reclaim its pluralistic values.
The writer is an MPhil scholar studying International Relations at Department of Political Science in University of the Punjab, Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected], https://www.facebook.com/inamullah.marwat.56
Published in Daily Times,September 25th 2017.