All these years later, and just months ahead of a monumental SCOTUS decision, @jonfavs continues to be either ignorant or dishonest or both about DACA. THREAD on why this is so annoying, and more importantly, why it matters. /1
@jonfavs Here’s what he said yesterday: “[T]hinking back on our immigration policy, for example, like, we had to wait until the second term to do the DACA EO […] and when you ask people why we did it take so long do x,y, and z, the only reason is cuz well the lawyers said no, no, no.” /2
Here’s the link to his discussion with @chrislhayes art19.com/shows/why-is-t…
(I'll return to Hayes later in the thread because his failure to ask a simple follow-up question about this is emblematic of MSNBCs failure to seriously cover immigrant rights for over a decade…). /3
(I'll return to Hayes later in the thread because his failure to ask a simple follow-up question about this is emblematic of MSNBCs failure to seriously cover immigrant rights for over a decade…). /3
Okay, so let’s get a couple of things straight: First, DACA was NOT an EO. If Favs put in the work to actually understand the topic, he (a master wordsmith!) would use appropriate language to describe it. It would literally take 5 minutes to understand (Am i right, @DLind?) / 4
Second, DACA didn’t happen in the second term. It happened in the first term. And not just that, it happened in the middle of an election year. In June of 2012. This timing matters a lot… Why? /5
Well for one thing, it totally belies and contradicts the next falsehood from Favreau: that lawyers were to blame for the delay of DACA? Really!?? /6
In fact, both the delay and the eventual deployment of exercised discretion were politically-motivated. Favs knows this. He wrote all of the speeches where Obama boasted of high deportation rates before giving passing promises of eventual legalization... /7
Also wtf, dude? The Supreme Court is literally deciding on the legality of DACA right now, and you go on MSNBC and say your own lawyers didn’t agree about the program's legality. What are you doing? Seriously. /8
And by the way, creative lawyers and organizers were, in fact, responsible creating the political space for DACA. Remember this? law.uh.edu/ihelg/document… / 9
Moreover, one of the lawyers working with organizers as a key architect pushing for DACA was this civil rights leader: nytimes.com/2009/03/24/opi…
Please @jonfavs, spend 30 seconds to read this before you blame lawyers again for Obama's delay in providing deportation relief. /10
Please @jonfavs, spend 30 seconds to read this before you blame lawyers again for Obama's delay in providing deportation relief. /10
What is true is that the origin story of DACA told from a perspective within the White House still has not been told publicly. It’s a mystery. /11
And worse, obfuscation about DACA’s origin by Obama alums has been used to gaslight the very immigrant civil rights leaders who were, in fact, responsible for the single biggest advance in undocumented immigrant rights in decades. See this thread: /12
And what is ironic and upsetting about Hayes and Favreau’s pithy, chuckling negation of the true history of DACA is that they literally just spent the previous hour talking like cultural anthropologists about people out there in the real world leading acts of resistance. /13
Hayes had just said how terrible he feels for immigrants in the Trump era, but if he had only covered this issue- even superficially- over the years he would’ve asked, "Hey, Favs, now that you mentioned it, can I ask about *how *DACA *happened so we can learn from it?” /14
If @chrislhayes & @jonfavs want to help (rather than quite literally harm efforts to defend DACA w/ their lawyer jokes), they could use their platforms to tell the real story about how we got here. If/when Trump is deposed, we would all benefit from knowing this history. /#
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