6.8 - Update: DACA students advised to be in US on January 20

Update: DACA students advised to be in US on January 20

This is a relatively quick Update. The bare facts speaks for themselves. Or as much as they can in the fact-free world of Donald TheRump.

Two weeks ago, I noted that hundreds of college and university presidents from across the US had signed a statement calling for continuing the policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. That policy, begun by executive order in June 2012, allows certain undocumented immigrants who entered the country as minors to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation.

The Update is that advocates for immigrants are now advising folks covered by the program to make sure that they are not traveling abroad when President Xenophobe is sworn in on January 20 because they are afraid that he might immediately rescind the program, with the result that they might be barred from returning to the US.

That is how deep, how real, the fear is; how deep, how real, the threat it.

Because no one can say that fear is an irrational one. TheRump made immigration the cornerstone of his campaign, promising to build a wall along the Mexican border and to deport undocumented immigrants by the millions.

Then later it was oh, no, he wants to focus on those who have committed crimes - which is exactly the Obama policy that he denounced as too soft during the campaign, even though the Amazing Mr. O deported more people than any previous president.

Continuing his pattern of spewing whatever bilge happens to be flushing through his sewer system of a mind at a given moment, during a recent magazine interview, TheRump expressed sympathy for the 741,000 people in the DACA program - despite having called it "illegal amnesty" during the campaign.

On top of that, no matter what he said, his advisers would rush out to walk back his comments almost as soon as they were published.

All of which gives those who had lived in hope and tried to build a life in the country they knew as home good and legitimate reason to fear that they will be forced back into the shadows - or worse.

And it gives the rest of us good cause to stand with them - because as the saying goes, no human being is illegal.