Will the DACA Program Include Obamacare?

The DACA program is a federal scam that began with a memo announcing Homeland Security’s surprise, hands-off prosecutorial discretion policy. This outrage to Congress and our separation of powers was quickly followed by the White House’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order. One of the selling points the Obama administration used for DACA was that federal benefits and the Affordable Care Act were off the table.

Members of the president’s party want to change that.

DACA program is a scam based on a lie

The White House stuck to the party line after DACA was announced:

Last June, DHS announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process, allowing young people who meet the guidelines to seek a two year provisional legal status to remain in the United States.¹

ICE was even more reserved about what the president had accomplished. The agency called the legal status of DACA eligibles into question, making Obama’s order sound more like what it really was, a pass on being deported:

Deferred action is a discretionary determination to defer removal action of an individual as an act of prosecutorial discretion. Deferred action does not provide an individual with lawful status.²

Most of us knew that provisional legal status was like a temporary tax increase, a foot in the door for Obama’s DREAMers that was easier than force feeding amnesty to taxpayers all at once. We were sold the lie that America was being unfair to childhood arrivals that included hapless 30-year olds stranded in our country by their illegal immigrant parents.

Democrats agreed DACA would not include health care

Even Democrats admitted that DACA was meant to be a temporary get out of jail free card and nothing more:

Deferred action provides temporary relief from enforcement but may be revoked at any time. Deferred action is not amnesty or immunity. It does not provide lawful immigration status or a path to a green card or citizenship. It does not extend to any family members of the person granted deferred action.³

Taxpayers were protected by prohibitions on federal benefits that included denial of Obamacare health coverage:

Consistent with current law, people with provisional legal status will not be eligible for welfare or other federal benefits, including subsidies or tax credits under the new health care law.⁴

Less than two years have passed since the deferred action order was given. Democratic memories must fade pretty fast.

House Democrats push to add Obamacare to deferred action

19 House Democrats cosponsored H.R. 4240, the Health Equity and Access Under the Law for Immigrant Women and Families Act of 2014. Like DACA’s deception that provisional status was for the benefit of young DREAMers, women are the easy excuse for this bill even though the preamble claims that the HEAL Act’s purpose is:

To expand access to health care services, including sexual, reproductive, and maternal health services, for immigrant women, men, and families by removing legal barriers to health insurance coverage, and for other purposes.⁵

The word “equity” in HEAL’s title tells you where the rhetoric is headed. The bill’s sponsor, New Mexico Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, doesn’t try to hide what she is after:

“This legislation would correct the harmful restrictions that have been placed on legal immigrants’ ability to access affordable health insurance coverage,” Rep. Lujan Grisham said.⁶

The problem is what constitutes a legal immigrant, because even if DACA can be misinterpreted to confer legal status the pass on being deported is provisional and temporary.

Fortunately, HEAL is not going anywhere unless Democrats gain the upper hand or the president’s flunkies figure out how to finagle an executive order to include deferred action recipients under the Obamacare umbrella. He hasn’t given illegal immigrants anything recently except stump speeches over the minimum wage. As with other grabby, over entitled special interests their question for 2014 will be “What are you doing for me NOW?” If Congress doesn’t give the president something to hand over, he may decide to answer the question by himself.

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