Question

Make a Constitutional-legal Argument as to whether or not President Obama had the constitutional authority to create the DACA program

Answer 1

About DACA Programme:

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA was introduced in 2012 by President Barack Obama as a stopgap measure that would shield from deportation people who were brought into the United States as children. The status is renewable, lasting two years at a time. The program does not provide a pathway to citizenship.

Participation in the program comes with a range of benefits. Along with permission to remain in the country, recipients can also get work permits, through which many have obtained health insurance from their employers.The ability to work has also allowed them to pay for school, pursue higher education and, in some states, drive legally. The program also opened up access to in-state tuition and state-funded grants and loans in some states. And depending on where they live, recipients can also qualify for state-subsidized health care.

DACA recipients are often referred to as Dreamers, after a similar piece of legislation called the Dream Act, which was introduced in 2001 and would have given its beneficiaries a path to American citizenship. The average DACA holder is now 25 years old, and the oldest is 37; the vast majority came from Mexico, though many others were born in Central and South America, Asia and the Caribbean. The status has been issued to roughly 800,000 people.

Since the Trump administration moved to end it in 2017, no new applications to the program have been accepted, but immigrant advocates have managed to keep it partially alive through legal challenges in which lower courts have decided that people who already have the status should be able to renew it until the Supreme Court issues a final ruling.

Constitutional Legal Argument at to whether or not President Obama had the constitutional Authority to create DACA Program:

• DACA was created by an executive order issued by President Obama in 2012 without the approval of Congress – despite the fact that Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution assigns complete authority to Congress to determine nation’s immigration rules.
• DACA provided a temporary promise that the government wouldn’t deport immigrants who were younger than 16 when they were brought to the U.S. illegally. DACA also provided these illegal immigrants with government benefits, such as work authorizations. And it allowed the president to defer deporting these illegal immigrants for years.
• But providing administrative amnesty and access to government benefits is beyond a president’s constitutional and statutory authority. This was the ruling of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals when it upheld a court order against President Obama’s attempt to expand DACA and implement another program with similar benefits in 2014, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).
• A number of challengers – including the University of California – went to court and managed to convince a federal district court judge and a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a court order preventing the Trump administration from ending DACA.
• The unconstitutionality of Obama's actions were confirmed when Obama tried to implement a second, similar program in 2014 called the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, or DAPA. Like DACA, DAPA provided an administrative amnesty for illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as adults and gave them work authorizations and access to government benefits.
• The unconstitutionality of Obama's actions were confirmed when Obama tried to implement a second, similar program in 2014 called the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, or DAPA. Like DACA, DAPA provided an administrative amnesty for illegal aliens who came to the U.S. as adults and gave them work authorizations and access to government benefits.

Legal Argument supporting constitionality of DACA:

• "They are dead wrong when they say that the DACA program adopted by the Obama administration was illegal," says Ted Olson, who served as solicitor general in the George W. Bush administration and is representing DACA plaintiffs in the Supreme Court. Olson points to programs similar to DACA that were put in place by every other president dating back to Dwight Eisenhower. These programs granted temporary legal status, for instance, to 600,000 Cubans in the 1950s and '60s and 1.5 million other undocumented immigrants under another program in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
• The move was immediately challenged in court by the University of California, a handful of states and DACA recipients who argued that the phase-out violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that governs how agencies can establish regulations.