This is clearly a new legal system for these immigrants, and in fact, President Obama once slipped and told an audience, “I just took action to change the law.” Prior to DACA, Obama repeatedly said that he didn’t have the authority to implement his own amnesty absent congressional action — before doing just that.
Now, Trump is giving Congress another chance. It has gotten out of the practice of legislating, but it isn’t hard to see the parameters of a deal: a codification of DACA, putting it on firm legal footing, in exchange for enforcement measures. Whatever Congress arrives at, it will have more legitimacy than the jerry-rigged legislating of a president wielding a pen and a phone.
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