There’s probably another universe where DACA was never needed in the first place because congresspeople didn’t care more about party loyalty & political optics than they did the lives of their fellow human beings. In yet another universe today was the day DACA expired (and that expiration actually meant something significant) after months of inaction from Congress. We live in a universe that’s in between those two, one where the DACA “deadline” doesn’t really mean much thanks to the actions of the Federal Courts but one where Congress’s only bipartisan agreement on immigration was rejected by the White House itself & eventually by the Senate.

DACA Is Literally The Result Of Congressional Inaction:

In case we’ve forgotten, the executive order that has become known as DACA is literally the result of congressional inaction when it came to passing comprehensive & effective reforms to immigration which specifically sought to grant legal status to people who were brought to this country as children & infants without documentation and have likely known no other home. Congress’s inaction is why we’re arrived at this point and Congress are the people who deserve to be blamed for this because without congressional deadlock DACA would never have been necessary.

What Has Happened With DACA Since Trump Became The President:

In September of 2017 President Trump announced his decision to kill the program & gave it a March 5th deadline which President Trump supposedly believed would be enough time for Congress to send an immigration bill to the White House. He would supposedly sign an immigration deal if it reached his desk and thus prevent any president from doing what he did and maliciously endangering the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who’ve done their best to proudly & openly serving and benefit this country.

DACA is directly the result of deliberate congressional inaction throughout the 2000s & early 2010s but the decision by the President to kill the policy was completely unnecessary. It obviously didn’t make it possible for a legislative “fix” to happen, despite the fact that one was in the works prior to being rejected by Trump & by the Republican (and a few Democrats) half of the Senate, despite the fact that some prominent Republicans backed & voted for the bipartisan deal in February.

What Needs To Happen Now In Congress & Elsewhere:

Any lawmaker who is serious about becoming a leader of the country should recognize the overwhelming support DACA has from the American people. If lawmakers wanted to gain or increase their popularity, they’d work as a party or as a faction within a party & come up with a new proposal which could protect DACA & do other things as well or preferably as a clean-bill (as in, by itself & not mixed with other things) which takes the DACA program and congressionally protects it, preventing it from being maliciously done away with by any president who decides he wants the wrath of the voter during the next presidential race.

After the rejection of the bipartisan deal, immigration talks & legislation have stopped being major news. It’s unknown what both parties plan to do next at this point but if either party is smart they’re undoubtedly planning to announce something today, and even if it fails will attempt to push through legislation which would save DACA & its recipients prior to the elections in November. Attempting to do this, especially if it’s not bipartisan could well result in voters who care about this issue gaining a more favorable stance towards either party & specific lawmakers involved.

It’s time that legislators decide to stop passively accepting Congress’s tradition of inaction & the negative consequences of such passivity and laziness. Everyday that nothing happens and Congress’s shameful tradition is allowed to be observed yet again more DREAMERs lose their status. It’s not only time that we as a country reject this tradition, it’s time that our legislators do so as well. If they don’t than we need to accept that they ought to be voted out of office. DACA recipients deserve to continue to be here and to be given an opportunity to contribute as much as they can to our society’s success without fear of deportation and without the dehumanization they’ve been subjected too, and even if our congress fails them & abandons them we as a society shouldn’t. We should protest for them, and demand that Congress takes the lead and protects them, while creating a pathway for them to be true and equal members of our society, a pathway to citizenship. No more inaction, laziness, & apathy towards DREAMERs just because sometimes it’s not a trendy or trending topic to fight for. We can and should fight for DACA everyday even when our campaigning for DACA goes unnoticed by the news & by the media. Until the day Congress does the right thing & pushes a DACA bill all the way to the White House & it gets signed we need to continue fighting. It’s not over yet and it won’t be over until DREAMERs are recognized as not only permanent residences & citizens but as true members of this country and that’s a long ways away but we can’t give up or get tired now. There’s still a lot to do.

Write blog posts, tweets, & letters to the editors of your local newspapers. Call your congresspeople & organize protests. Talk about this with your friends & family. Stand for those who aren’t able to stand for themselves and who are too afraid to protest visibly because they could be detained if they make themselves visible & stand with those bold enough to be visible and who demand to be heard. Don’t let anyone be thrown back into the shadows. Make it known that inaction & silence here from congresspeople means that they should be ready to find new jobs after November.