谁偷走了他们的“美国梦”
If you work hard and play by the rules, you will move up. That is the gist of the American Dream. In Donald Trump’s view, however, hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers” who arrived as undocumented children were breaking the rules. Roughly two-thirds of Americans disagree, including virtually every business leader of note and many leading Republicans. If Congress fails to protect the Dreamers, President Trump can blame them. The buck never stops at Mr Trump’s desk.
He has given Capitol Hill six months to agree on what it has been unable to do in more than 30 years: pass an immigration reform bill. After that, most Dreamers will be at fate’s mercy. The odds that this Congress, which has had the least productive first eight months of any in US history, will do so are slim. No big reform is likely without White House support. In theory, Mr Trump is neutral on whether it should legalise the Dreamers, or kick them out of the country. In reality he is in favour of deportation. He just wants others to press the eject button.
他给了国会六个月时间，就如下这件国会三十多年都未能做成的事情达成一致：通过一项移民改革法案。在那之后，大多数“梦想者”就只能听天由命了。本届国会前八个月的工作堪称美国史上最低效，它用六个月通过这一法案的可能性很小。没有白宫的支持，任何重大改革都不太可能实现。理论上，在白宫该给这些“梦想者”合法身份还是该将他们赶出美国的问题上，特朗普是中立的。实际上，他支持将他们驱逐出境。他只是想让别人按下“驱逐”按钮。The move is quintessential Trump on many levels. First, his reasoning is typically garbled. All of a sudden Mr Trump believes in constitutional limits to his power. Barack Obama offered a reprieve to the Dreamers by executive order, thus supposedly trampling on Congress’s turf. But that interpretation is by no means clear-cut. Other scholars say presidents have the right to interpret how to enforce the law. Mr Obama simply rolled out a “deferred action” on one type of illegal immigrant — children brought to the US by their parents, typically around the age of six.
从许多层面上看，这都是典型的特朗普式做法。首先，他逻辑混乱。突然间，特朗普相信起宪法对总统行政权的限制了。巴拉克?奥巴马(Barack Obama)以行政命令的方式让“梦想者”暂时免于被驱逐，因而理论上侵犯了国会的地盘。但这种解读根本不严密。一些学者称，总统有权解释如何执行法律。奥巴马只是针对一种类型的非法移民——通常在六岁左右被父母带至美国的儿童——推出了一项“暂缓遣返行动”(deferred action)。
Even if the courts rejected special treatment for Dreamers, Mr Trump has a history of giving judges the middle finger. That was his response to the various courts that ruled against his “Muslim ban” on travellers from six Muslim-majority nations earlier this year. He is appealing against them to the Supreme Court. When it comes to the fate of the Dreamers, however, Mr Trump is a paragon of executive modesty. His move seems even odder 10 days after he stretched the limits of presidential clemency to pardon Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who was convicted of racial profiling.
即便法院拒绝为“梦想者”提供特殊待遇，特朗普也不是没有对法官亮过中指。今年早些时候多家法院否决特朗普“禁穆令”（针对六个穆斯林占多数国家的旅行者）的时候，他就是这样回应的。他正在向最高法院提出上诉。然而，到了关系“梦想者”命运的事情上，特朗普却变成了克制总统行政权的典范。让他的这一举动更显奇怪的是，10天前，他还以考验总统特赦权限度的方式，赦免了因种族貌相(racial profiling)而被定罪的亚利桑那州前警长乔?阿尔帕约(Joe Arpaio)。So much for the law. Then there is Mr Trump’s odd economics. Much as he would love to help the Dreamers, his first duty is to help the “the unemployed, struggling and forgotten Americans”. African Americans, in particular, are victims of illegal immigration, says the White House. Here Mr Trump is falling for the lump of labour fallacy, which assumes the economy has a fixed number of jobs. If America deports 800,000 people, the thinking goes, the same number of jobs will open up.
由此可见，他关于尊重法律的理由站不住脚。此外，特朗普的经济盘算也很奇怪。尽管他很乐意帮助“梦想者”，但他的首要职责是帮助那些“没有工作、身处困境、被遗忘的美国人”。白宫表示，非洲裔美国人受非法移民的冲击尤其严重。在这里，特朗普犯了“劳动总量固定”的错误——假定美国经济中只有固定数量的就业机会。这种思维认为，如果美国驱逐80万人出境，同样数量的工作岗位就将空出来。It is untrue of course. It is also hypocritical. Mr Trump seems only to remember “forgotten Americans” when they serve as rhetorical victims of other groups. Though the president is neutral on what happens to the Dreamers, he supports a bill that would halve legal immigration to America.
这当然是假的，也很虚伪。当特朗普说到受其他族群冲击的美国人时，他记得的似乎只是“被遗忘的美国人”。尽管特朗普对“梦想者”的遭遇持中立态度，但他支持一项将进入美国的合法移民数量减半的法案。But the most visceral target of President Trump’s action is Mr Obama. By helping the Dreamers, Mr Obama had violated “the core tenets that sustain our republic”, Mr Trump said. In so arguing, Mr Trump did not just misportray the American creed. He nullified it. But that may well be an afterthought. The thread that links Mr Trump’s actions since taking office is his obsession with undoing all of his predecessor’s legacy.
但是，特朗普此举最终目标是奥巴马。特朗普表示，通过帮助“梦想者”，奥巴马违反了“维系我们这个共和国的核心信条”。特朗普的这种说法不止是歪曲了美国信条——他毁掉了美国信条。但这说法很可能是他事后想出来的。自上任以来，特朗普行为的主线就是不遗余力地消除其前任的一切政治遗产。Mr Trump has repeatedly tried to repeal Obamacare — and failed, much to his chagrin. He has reversed Mr Obama’s partial opening up to Cuba. He has undone most of Mr Obama’s anti-pollution actions. And he has pulled the US out of the Paris deal on global warming. Dreamers were always on his hit list. Even where Mr Trump has continued Mr Obama’s policies, notably on Afghanistan, he presented it as a departure. Anyone hoping Mr Obama’s landmark Iran nuclear deal will survive Mr Trump’s first year should take note. It is in his sights. The same applies to Mr Obama’s US-South Korea trade deal.
特朗普已多次试图废除“奥巴马医改”(Obamacare)，又多次失败——令他恼火不已。他推翻了奥巴马政府对古巴部分放开的政策。他取消了奥巴马的大部分反污染行动。他还让美国退出了解决全球变暖问题的《巴黎协定》。“梦想者”一直就在他的打击名单上。即便在继续推行奥巴马政策的领域——主要是阿富汗问题——他也采用了“新战略”这样的表述。寄望于奥巴马具有里程碑意义的伊朗核协议能挺过特朗普上任第一年的人们都应注意了。该协议在他的目标名单上。奥巴马的美韩贸易协定也是一样。Can Mr Trump ever forgive Mr Obama? It may be too much to expect. Mr Trump is like Captain Ahab on a never-ending hunt. Unlike Ahab’s whale, however, Mr Obama cannot be harpooned. Mr Trump essentially launched his political career in 2011 when he accused Mr Obama of faking his birth certificate. He was rightly mocked for alleging Mr Obama was born in Africa.
特朗普能饶过奥巴马吗？或许不能。特朗普就像一心捕杀大白鲸的亚哈船长(Captain Ahab)。然而，不同于亚哈追捕的鲸鱼，奥巴马不能被鱼叉擒住。特朗普真正开启自己的政治生涯就是在2011年，当时他指控奥巴马伪造出生证明。由于断言奥巴马出生与非洲，特朗普理所当然地受到了嘲讽。Long before Mr Trump thought of the Dreamers, Mr Obama was his original illegal immigrant. It is hard to forget how well Mr Obama ridiculed him for having spread the mother of all fake news stories. Innocents are still paying the price for Mr Trump’s humiliation.
在特朗普想到“梦想者”很久之前，他最初想到的非法移民就是奥巴马。很难忘记奥巴马当初是如何奚落特朗普传播了一条假新闻之王的。无辜的人们仍在为特朗普当初所受的羞辱付出代价。
