Suzy Khimm checks in on the latest immigration nontroversy, the supposed "stealth DREAM Act" instituted by the Obama administration in the form of an ICE memo reminding the agency that their priority is the removal of undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
Certainly, immigration hawks and restrictionists have grasped upon the ICE memo as evidence that Obama has granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants and passed the DREAM Act through the backdoor. "President Barack Obama's administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants," wrote The Daily Caller. The story added that the memo was "like a stealth DREAM Act enforcement through non-enforcement,” quoting anti-immigration lawyer Kris Kobach.
Again, this is more of a re-emphasis on the administration's "priorities" regarding how to allocate limited resources, which the administration thinks should be devoted to removing undocumented immigrants who pose a clear threat to public safety. Despite that emphasis, around half of the administrations' record deportations numbers come from "non-criminal violators" of immigration law.
I wish Khimm had offered more of a pushback to Kobach's objection here, which is pure nonsense. The ICE memo deprioritizes the removal of the kind of undocumented immigrants who might be eligible for a path to citizenship under the DREAM Act, but not being deported isn't the same thing as attaining citizenship. Undocumented immigrants will face the same restrictions on their ability to find work or attend school that they would absent the DREAM Act's provisions, and depending on the degree to which the state they reside in employs a policy of "attrition through enforcement," those can be considerable.
As I noted above, "prosecutorial discretion" isn't so much a promise that these immigrants won't be deported as a roll of the dice, since the administration has been deporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants without criminal records anyway. The government is handing undocumented immigrants the bottom half of a sesame seed bun it peeled off the concrete of a busy city sidewalk and Kobach is calling it a double quarter pounder with cheese.
UPDATE: A reader knowledgeable on immigration issues reminds me that "A formal grant of deferred action generally includes work authorization for the duration of the deferred action," and that "they've tended to renew those for DREAMers who've won deferred action." But that again depends on individual circumstances, it's not a guarantee that you're going to get to stay, let alone acquire citizenship, which is the entire point of the DREAM Act.
