DACA: Sins of the Father?

With the Trump administration set to end DACA its supporters have come up with a uniform rallying cry in its defense. “In America we do not punish children for the sins of their parents”.

Except we do. All the time. One of the most important concepts that almost all Democrats hold dear is affirmative action. Doesn’t this punish the children because their ancestors were supposedly racist?

If somebody robs a bank and gives the money to his children what do we do? Do we leave the money with his children as returning it to their original owner would be punishing them? No we would return the money to the owner of the property.

What if the parent and child would illegally squat in an apartment or home owned by someone else? Would we say they can stay there because the child did nothing wrong? Or would we evict them?

If a single parent murders someone in cold blood do we keep him out of prison because it would hurt the child? No the murderer goes into prison and the child gets put into some foster home or relative.

It would actually be fairly rare to find a situation where a child is not punished in some way for the actions of his parent.

In any case the illegals are not blameless as they did cross the border without getting the proper authorization. Remember we are not talking about criminal cases here but rather civil cases where in some cases actual commission of the act is enough even without intent. I encourage everyone to keep this in mind as supporters of DACA try to make the case for its morality using the much stricter standards of criminal justice and law.

Now that we have dispensed with the platitudes let us discuss what is really happening. Why is congress both republicans and democrats so hell bent on encouraging illegal immigration?

Democrats

For Democrats its simple. Its all about the votes. I will not go down the path of people voting illegally as that is always sure to start an argument. I will just point out that political parties think in terms of decades and not just years. The DACA “children” have already been here for 8 years and for some of them even longer. They may even be adults now capable of having children of their own. Children who by virtue of birthright citizenship (something only one or two countries provide) will be American citizens. These people can then vote for Democrats in the future.

Democrats are fond of saying that Demographics is destiny as a prophesy of their eventually victory. This is the Democrats pushing that along.

Republicans

To be completely fair this next section does not only apply to Republicans. Establishment Democrats want this as much as their Republican counterparts do. Our politicans want this because it serves their corporate paymasters. Encouraging more illegal immigration with DACA and other measures like that increases the amount of labor available which reduces its cost and bargaining power. Leading to lower wages to everyone.

All Republicans and most Democrats claim to be capitalists who favor free trade and free markets. Under a capitalist system labor is just like any other commodity. If there is a scarcity of labor then its prices increase and if there is too much labor then its prices decrease. It is funny. When the free market dictate that the price of labor decrease our politicians turn into avatars of the free market. When the free market dictates that the price of labor increases our politicians cannot stand it and work to correct it.

We all want wages to increase to help the economy. The only way to do that is to control the supply of labor. Ending DACA is a step in this direction.