Facing Covid-19 as an Undocumented Essential Worker

> President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to reinstate DACA

DACA is an act that cannot be repealed because it grants "Equitable Entitlements." It's very similar to the Emancipation Proclamation. If a president after Lincoln wanted to overturn it, they certainly could try (at least until the 13th Amendment was ratified), but it would hit a legal burden because you'd now be taking away rights. You could even argue it'd be taking away "unalienable rights."

The same goes with DACA. The government cannot say, "give us your name and address and we won't deport you" and then, with a late president, then deport you after granting those rights.

I do not like DACA. If America needs more unskilled workers, the immigration system should be reformed to let them in legally, via similar processes to H1-Bs. Currently only a few thousand are let in legally as unskilled from South and Central America. I've gone through immigration before in other countries, and it takes background checks, medical checks, and several other things that ensure a baseline identity for people coming in.

You can argue we didn't need this 200 years ago, but the previous world without documented citizens, passports and immigration also contained a world with a larger slave trade, larger inequity, the spreading of invasive species, etc. Some socialite changes are good.

I understand things are bad for undocumented workers, but they, or their parents, made the decision to come in illegally.

DACA is a Pandora's Box when it comes to executive powers. It would be different if Congress passed this, but they didn't. Granting more powers to the executive is going to bite the US government in the ass at some point.