Civics Lesson 101 & DACA

First of all, my heart truly goes out to the estimated 800,000 “Dreamers” who unfortunately are caught in the cross-hairs of a very important civics lesson for the large majority of the American population. Secondly, I AM NOT making a case for citizenship or deportation of these people. The American public must decide this at the polls, when you elect your representatives, which is the mechanism to find a solution to this problem.  I am however making a case for the need of the American public to understand how their government works. The reality is, this situation really does not have as much to do with this group of people, as it does with the structure and function of the republican form of government that our Founding Fathers established 228 years ago. And further than that, and more importantly, the fact that the majority of Americans do not even recognize the function and structure of government crisis that this situation is presenting to the people of this country.

The fact that I have seen too many television pundits, “Dreamers,” and even former President Obama make solely an emotional argument, stating how cruel President Trump’s action was, as opposed to a structure and function of government one, about why this group of people should be granted citizenship, only serves to make my point.  It is very easy to accept the emotional argument for this poor group of people, who by and large had absolutely nothing to do with being in this country as an illegal alien, undocumented immigrant, world citizen, or whatever politically correct terminology you so desire to use.  This is beside the point however.  The point actually is that emotions are not the relevant issue here.  The relevant issue here is the sovereign rule of law of a nation and how said nation has constructed its structure and function of government.

Our Founding Fathers were incredibly knowledgeable of world history and the rise and fall of great empires and nations.  They used said knowledge of antiquity like a buffet table.  They chose the desirable and good pieces of government and left the undesirable and bad pieces out.  In the end they created a brilliant system of government, with three distinct and separate branches: executive, legislative, and judicial, each with their own distinct and separate powers.  However, these three branches were also created to do a dance with each other in which each branch is purposefully and overtly watched by the other two to make sure that the people’s rights are protected, because this is the foremost purpose of government:  the protection of people’s rights.

These separate powers is the point of the civics lesson that our nation so desperately needs right now, including the television pundits, “Dreamers,” and sadly our former constitutional law professor and president, Barack Obama.  Bottom line, Article I, section 1 of the U.S. Constitution created the legislative power of our government when it states, “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…”  The Constitution is very clear.  The law-making responsibility is solely vested in the legislative branch, not the executive.  The executive branch can however influence the lawmaking process because it can “recommend to their (Congress) consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” (Article II, section 3).  The executive can make suggestions of policy and law, but the Constitution is incredibly clear on this distinction of who can actually make the bills that can be sent to the president in order to become laws.

Further, Congress possesses the sole power of dealing with immigration issues, not just because of their law-making powers, but also as specified in the Constitution in Article I, section 8, clause 4, where it states that the Congress has the power “to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”

Now, here is where the problem is, and has been, the executive branch’s use of the executive order.  To dive deeper into this very real constitutional crisis, that has been an issue since George Washington’s administration, please read this fascinating and in depth research article from the Cato Institute that studies the executive orders of past presidents, along with the very serious lack of constitutional accountability from the legislative and judicial branches to keep the executive branch in check when it crosses the line into a legislative role. (https://www.cato.org/publications/congressional-testimony/impact-executive-orders-legislative-process-executive-lawmaking).

The bottom line is President Obama signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in 2012 to protect these undocumented immigrants in our country because the U.S. Congress was not willing or able to create any legislation to his satisfaction that would grant amnesty to this incredibly large group of people.  Truthfully, the issue had already been settled because of the many naturalization and immigration laws that already existed in U.S. law at this point, so in all reality Congress did not have to do anything.  Again, there was no problem to solve because laws already existed which provided the solution to this situation.

This however was not satisfactory to President Obama, and instead of respecting the structure and function that exists in our government, allowing Congress to make the laws, he made an emotional argument to defend this group of people and very unconstitutionally created the DACA executive order to protect them.  To be clear, this action by the president was in fact legislation, which contradicted U.S. law, and further was not done with the legislative body, but in spite of their willingness or ability to do anything about it.  This was in fact an unconstitutional action by the president, which a few state’s attorney generals were beginning the process of challenging in federal courts, with the intent of getting the courts to use their power of judicial review to declare this executive order unconstitutional.

Now we fast forward to today and President Trump’s actions, which have caused such an uproar in our very ignorant and uninformed population on what George Washington called the Science of Government.  All President Trump did was to get rid of President Obama’s unconstitutional executive order so that the U.S. Congress, the only governmental mechanism capable of constitutionally dealing with it, could do so.  Therefore, if Congress passes a bill which protects this group of people the same way DACA did, and President Trump signs it into law, it would be protected constitutionally.  The only mechanism of getting rid of it at that point would be through a challenge to the federal court system, in which the Supreme Court could make the final and ultimate ruling on its constitutionality.  And that is how our government was designed to work.

The bottom line in this Civics Lesson 101 is that our Founding Fathers were very clear in their understanding of the importance of a proper Civics education of the American public.  They created a brilliant experiment, but unfortunately its success or failure depends on their posterity.  As George Washington stated, “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government.  In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?  And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”  Each generation is responsible for transferring this very requisite knowledge down to the next, but sadly over the last couple of generations this is not taking place very well.  If it were, we would not even be having this debate in our country right now.

The ultimate fear of the Founding Fathers, written about over and over in the Federalist Papers, was of an American society to ignorant of the structure and function of the American government, which can and will create a direct line to tyranny and a dictator coming to power.  Emotional arguments about a group of people’s citizenship or deportation only clouds the Civics lesson that needs to be learned here by many Americans.  The process of granting this group of people citizenship, or deporting them back to their home country, is not the job of the president, be it Obama or Trump.  It is in fact the job of Congress.

Therefore, please just let them do their job here, and if you do not like their decision, VOTE!!  That is the biggest right of a citizen in a republican-democracy.  We are just over one year from the 2018 mid-term elections, and every member of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for reelection.  You, as American citizens, hold the power to keep them in office, or to place someone else there.  The power of the American government is in the hands of the people, as long as the people know how to wield said power and take advantage of it.  And to this end, this situation will be resolved the way the Founding Fathers designed it to be.

So, in conclusion, please stop whining about the processes of government when you do not understand how the government was created to work, and hopefully Congress will deal with this situation and find a reasonable solution for these 800,000 illegal immigrants in our country.