DACA (deferred action for childhood arrivals) means that if you came to America as a child with your parents you can stay. Technically your parents broke the law but since you were a small child at the time it seems pretty heartless to send you back to a country you never really lived in.

Here is an explanation of the political reality of the issue and why it's such a huge debate right now.

It comes down to a choice between following the rules and feeling bad or breaking the rules and feeling good.

Here are some stats for DACA Dreamers over 25: (the dreamers skew younger so the numbers will probably be lower than the averages mostly because of that but in part for a variety of other reasons)

• 36% have more than a high school education vs. 40% nationally

• 24% own a home vs 64% nationally

• Median household income of $37,000 vs $56,000 nationally

• 7% unemployment vs. 4% nationally

• 0.001% military service vs 7.3% nationally

Stats from:

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2017/08/28/437956/daca-recipients-economic-educational-gains-continue-grow/

Dreamers, since they are below average on key economic indicators of success, are more likely to require government services to help them succeed. This is not a judgement, it's just a fact that where you're poor you need more help from the state. Because more Dreamers need help than the average this makes them economically and culturally predisposed to vote Democrat more than Republican.

So from the charts below it’s pretty clear why the Republicans don’t want to let the dreamers stay.

If you look at what happened in California after the 1986 Amnesty the state became solidly Democrat and will remain so as long as the politicians can afford to import new voters who will depend on government spending and thus vote to increase that spending. Obviously not all new voters will depend on government spending but we know that people who have less education, less income, lower home ownership, lower military participation, and higher unemployment typically depend more on government spending. Again...not a judgement...just a fact.

If we look at there the DACA dreamers live we can see where an addition of 211,000 voters along with 5 to 10 extended family members through chain migration would add 2 million new and mostly Democrat voters to Texas thereby making Texas a blue state. The same math makes Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Jersey, Illinois, and Arizona permanently blue states like California, Washington and New York.

While we can empathize with an individual who has spent their life in this country, politically we would move the country towards European or California style Democratic socialism where the state transfers wealth to imported new voters in order to remain in power while gradually weakening itself economically through lower growth and higher taxation.

Most Democrats think that the government should help people and most Republican think that people should help themselves. Obviously at some point the money runs out and we're all Venezuela so the trick is finding the right balance between all being poor together and massive inequality. It's a process and a negotiation and anyone who thinks they have the answer is full of shit.

However, the choice is a stark one for elected officials right now. Send the dreamers back to the country of their birth which would require a staggering lack of empathy or give them citizenship which could end the era of low tax, high growth capitalism in America.

An acceptable way forward might be to end chain migration and only give citizenship to the best and the brightest of the DACA dreamers. Send back anyone without a high school education, who remains unemployed for more than a year without a good reason or who has a criminal record. Essentially if you finish high school, get a job and stay out of jail you can stay. If you're a lazy crook then maybe go somewhere else. It feel right to me but reality is always more complicated and more tragic!

Border security and eVerify would certainly prevent this terrible mess with only difficult choices from happening again.

Feel free to make comments and I'll correct any stats if you can find better ones. I'm interested in thoughtful discussion - I'm happy to be enlightened. Haters and screamers will be ignored.