Regardless of what positive impact it may have on your friends, family, or yourself, you have to admit that Democratic President Joe Biden’s actions this week were politically motivated: issuing an executive order to provide legal status and protection from deportation to hundreds of thousands of undocumented spouses (and their children) of U.S. citizens, allowing them to apply for lawful permanent residence.
These moves by Biden would provide a faster path for DACA recipients. (an illegal immigrant brought to the U.S. as a child) gets a work visa.
Now, you know there will be Republicans like my friend, Stan Burns, who is a political consultant in Arizona, who will say that Biden’s move is political. But there are some who say that.
Stan said it was a “too little, too late” political move. Former President Donald Trump has a lead of about 4.5 percentage points over Biden in Arizona, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls.
But even if it is not politically effective, it is still political.
So if an immigration lawyer who was brought to this country as a child and now lives in the legal grey area known as DACA feels like he’s a political pawn… know It’s a political thing.
“Yeah, from the moment I can remember, I’ve felt like a pawn. Whether it was Democrats or Republicans, there were always false promises and scare tactics,” Sal Macias told Jamie West and me. Arizona Morning News.
He criticizes (and praises) both parties, noting that Democrat Bill Clinton, who was president when Sal was brought to the U.S. as a preschooler, signed many laws that made it very hard to become an official American, and Sal points to Republican President George W. Bush as the man who wanted to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
Of course, Bush’s dreams were dashed by his own party.
It’s been a long time since either party has actually done anything to change the law — passing legislation rather than just issuing executive orders from the White House — but the next president could end that.
“I remember when I was in the fourth grade. [in] “The DREAM Act was first proposed in 2000,” Sal told me, “and now, 24 years later, we’re still hoping Congress will get it done. But unfortunately, it seems like Congress is pushing in the other direction.”
It certainly does look pawn-like.
But it’s not just illegal immigrants, citizens married to illegal immigrants, and Dreamers who have a right to feel like political pawns. Americans who live on the border, too, have seen Republicans back away from a bill that included most of their demands, because Trump asked them to do so so he could use the border issue as leverage to get back into the White House.
While this isn’t really a game (because people’s lives are at stake), in the larger chess game that is the presidential election, it feels like Biden’s reelection team is playing checkers, and Trump could reach their side of the checkerboard and declare, “Make Me King!”
