I try to give credit where it’s due, so I will give the overgrown child in the White House credit for doing something good and merciful while nobody was looking late last night.
What he did was, he reversed one of his major campaign promises.
Again.
And good for him. This one is one to be cheered.
Specifically, the Trump Administration (that’s shorthand for Donald Trump) announced that it will extend his former President Obama’s so-called “Dreamers” protection program.
This will protect from deportation the almost 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children.
So-called “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants who were brought into America as children, protesting outside Trump Tower in New York last year. Trump has flip-flopped on a campaign promise, big-time, to protect the Dreamers from deportation and good for him. © EDUARDO MUNOZ ALVAREZ/AFP/Getty Images.
Of course, I’m going by what The New York Times reported this morning, so Trump supporters won’t believe it until it’s confirmed as factual by Fox News and the Russian News Agency.
But being the gullible Times reader I am, I believe this report from the Times is accurate:
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WASHINGTON — President Trump has officially reversed his campaign pledge to deport the so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as small children.
The Department of Homeland Security announced late Thursday night that it would continue the Obama-era program intended to protect those immigrants from deportation and provide them work permits so they can find legal employment.
A fact sheet posted on the department’s website says immigrants enrolled in the 2012 program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, “will continue to be eligible” to renew every two years and notes that “no work permits will be terminated prior to their current expiration dates.”
Trump’s hardcore base is not going to like this Mother of All Flip-Flops.
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The decision is a reversal from Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign and is likely to disappoint some of the president’s most ardent supporters, who view the program started by former President Barack Obama as an illegal grant of amnesty.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly agreed with that sentiment. At one rally last summer, Mr. Trump vowed to “immediately terminate” the DACA program, saying that Mr. Obama had “defied federal law and the Constitution.” (My italics for emphasis.)
But once in office, Mr. Trump faced a new reality: the political risks of targeting for deportation a group of people who are viewed sympathetically by many Americans. In some cases, the immigrants did not know they were in the country illegally. Many attended American schools from the time they were in kindergarten.
In fairness, Trump started to hint before he was sworn into office that he wanted to protect the Dreamers. And months ago he went so far as to promise he wouldn’t deport those 800,000 Americans among us, reportedly going so far as to say to Republican senators at one point, “I don’t want to hurt those kids. It’s a matter of the heart.”
Honestly, in spite of my fierce loathing* of this reckless, immature, rolling cannonball who maintains part-time residence in “The People’s House” (i.e., White House), I do believe he has a good heart deep down there in the darkest coddles.
I just pray every day that he’ll open it up and let more goodness, mercy and compassion gush forth in this broken and violent world.
This action to protect the Dreamers, which already is enraging the hardcore base that has no interest in a kinder, gentler and more united America, could do him political harm, but I pray it’s the start of a new direction.
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* Donald Trump will earn my respect the day he really does take a whole new direction in his life and leadership. A new direction in life will require a lot of heartfelt repentance and asking of forgiveness for diminishing the God-given humanity of all the masses of people he has hurt with his words and actions.
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