DACA- lawsuits to protect the human rights of young immigrants

Although right wing Brietbart News (Brietbart_barfcart) and bigoted spokesperson Steve Bannon are somehow accusing the Roman Catholic church of opportunism in supporting DACA, they ignore the corporate responsibility being exercised by a list of America's major employers.

Protecting the young adults and youth who are living in US as residents with DACA immigration status is a humanitarian position. Hard working people and kids should be protected by all Americans. To do otherwise is cruel.

In Washington state, the Seattle Times reports on lawsuit against ending DACA:

Seattle Times

"I’m not going to put up with it"- Washington state Attorney General Ferguson says lawsuit over DACA (Deferred Action for Childrens Arrival) will show Trump’s bias: Seattle Times

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said rescinding DACA is discriminatory and violates the due-process rights of young immigrants brought here as children.

Charging Donald Trump with violating promises and discriminating against young Mexican immigrants, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced hat 15 states and the District of Columbia are suing the Trump administration over its decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“It’s outrageous. It is. It’s outrageous. I’m not going to put up with it,” Ferguson said at a morning news conference in Seattle, where he was joined by Gov. Jay Inslee and a half-dozen DACA recipients. The attorney general called this a “dark time for our country.”

Washington, New York and Massachusetts are taking the lead on the lawsuit, Ferguson said. The arguments in the 58-page complaint on behalf of Dreamers, brought to the U.S. illegally as children, are complex, he allowed.

The lawsuit claims Trump violated constitutional due process and equal-protection guarantees, as well as federal laws requiring certain procedures be followed before a complex program such as DACA is dismantled.

Ferguson said he had one question. “If the overwhelming majority of Dreamers were Caucasian, does anybody really think this president would take the action he took yesterday?”

Trump’s actions show animus toward people with Mexican roots, the lawsuit claims. As Ferguson did previously when challenging Trump’s travel ban, he pointed to statements the president made during his campaign, as well as in office — calling Mexicans, for example, criminals and “bad hombres.”

Nearly 80 percent of the country’s some 800,000 Dreamers are of Mexican descent, Ferguson said. As of March, the government had approved close to 18,000, DACA applications from Washington state residents.

Proponents of the DACA program and advocates for those who share this immigrant status, said the move by Trump was cruel.

The states involved in the lawsuit, filed in New York Wednesday, are Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia. Washington, D.C., also joined the suit.

All have attorneys general who are Democrats.

California, one of the most solid Democratic states, was noticeably absent. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra plans to file a separate lawsuit because a quarter of DACA recipients are California residents, his spokeswoman said.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee 

Due process issues?

The multistate lawsuit claims that ending DACA causes immediate harm to states’ businesses, colleges and universities, and economies.

Its due-process claims rest in part on the government’s earlier promises not to use personal information submitted by DACA applicants against them.

The federal government has said that it does not intend to actively target Dreamers for deportation once the six-month period is over. But Ferguson said the Trump administration has given no guarantees.

States don’t need to wait for the government to actually detain people, said Colleen Melody, chief of Ferguson’s civil-rights unit, speaking at the news conference.

She said the federal government, on its website explaining the DACA application process, has already taken down responses to frequently asked questions that say applicants’ information won’t be used for other purposes.

“You cannot trust Donald Trump on anything,” Governor Inslee added.

The lawsuit also claims Trump’s end of DACA was arbitrary and capricious, and violated two federal laws. One, called the Administrative Procedure Act, requires a process to end a program like DACA, including a period of fact-finding and public comment, according to Ferguson and Melody.

“It may sound technical, but believe me it is not technical,” Ferguson said.

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals cited the act when ruling againstanother program Obama created, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), which would help the parents of DACA recipients, Ferguson said.

In that case, Obama was said to have ignored the proper process in creating DAPA. Asked whether it was possible that judges might say that DACA was invalid for that same reason, Melody said those two were different programs.

For one thing, she said, DAPA was never implemented and DACA has been up and running for five years.

She and Ferguson also stressed that, while the Trump administration has said it is ending DACA to protect the rule of law, no court has ruled DACA illegal.

The Seattle area’s corporate giants also lent their support. The chief executives of Amazon.com, Microsoft and Starbucks last week signed their names to an open letter urging Trump to keep DACA in place.

Each company filed declarations supporting the lawsuit, which outlined the harm they and their employees would suffer if the program ended.

Ayesha Blackwell-Hawkins, who oversees Amazon’s immigration strategy, said the company was aware of nine DACA recipients employed by the e-commerce giant. “We believe, like most large U.S. companies, there are many more,” she said.

Microsoft, which said it was aware of 39 Dreamers within its ranks, pledged to defend those employees.

“If Dreamers who are our employees are in court, we will be by their side,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, in a blog post.

*MaineWriter opinion- the acronym "DACA" is terribly impersonal. The cold meaningless abbreviation is void of human emotion.  This program is a children's humanitarian policy put in place to protect the dignity of young people who are living in the US because their immigrant parents brought them here, without the authority to do so.

Corporations Supporting Obamacare - Thank you Starbucks

Shame on companies that cut employee hours and, thereby, their pay because the corporations won't comply with health care reform or the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare".

Starbucks, thankfully, is a refreshingly ethical exception.

Corporate officers in big businesses continue to receive stock options for bonuses. Certainly, they must remember the people who earn the corporation's financial successes.  

Management earns very little of the money corporations pay their executives.  Rather, the big corporate salaries, bonuses and generous benefits, including executive health insurance, are earned by hard working hourly employees, for management to reap.  It's hard working personnel who earn the benefits the corporate executives see in their salaries.

Obviously, hourly workers deserve health insurance coverage, regardless of how many hours they work.

Employees certainly don't deserve to have hours and pay cut because of health care reform, especially when management keeps their bonuses and benefits. 

It's an understatement to accuse corporations that cut employee hours and, therefore, pay, because they won't comply with Obamacare, as acting selfishly.

Rather than cut employee hours, somebody should recommend cutting executive salaries for those in management who refuse to comply with health care reform.

Employers around the country, from fast-food franchises to colleges,  told NBC News they will be cut workers' hours below 30 a week because they can't afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
But, Starbucks, the popular coffee dynasty, won't cut worker hours or benefits ahead of Obamacare says the CEO.

When Starbucks Corporation stands up in support of employee health insurance benefits under Obamacare, then other companies can do the same thing. 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Starbucks Coffee Co will not follow the lead of some other companies (like Subway) that are cutting health insurance benefits or reducing hours for employees in anticipation of the U.S. Affordable Care Act, the coffee shop chain's CEO Howard Schultz told Reuters on Monday.

"Other companies have announced that they won't provide coverage for spouses; others are lobbying for the cut-off to be at 40 hours. But Starbucks will continue maintaining benefits for partners and won't use the new law as excuse to cut benefits or lower benefits for its workers," Schultz said in a telephone interview.

The 2010 healthcare reform law, often called Obamacare, requires companies with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week or more. Starbucks currently provides healthcare to part-timers who work 20 hours a week or more.

And, therefore, all other companies with 50 or more employees can and should follow the Starbucks lead. 

For my part, Starbucks is a now a preferred coffee company.