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FMH Background and History 1 Introduction On September 5, 2017, President Donald Trump issued an ex- ecutive order rescinding President Barack Obama’s 2012 execu- tive action, Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA). His order gave the U.S. Congress until March 5, 2018, to enact a legislative solution to the matter. His executive order put squarely on the agenda of Congress action on DACA and possible comprehensive immigration reform (White House, 2017). Congress has been essentially stalemated in taking leg- islative action on DACA and on comprehensive immigration reform for more than a decade. Despite widespread and bi- partisan agreement that the legal immigration system was bro- ken, and despite public opinion favoring immigration reform rated at more than 80 percent in many public opinion polls, the hyperpartisan politics of the U.S. Congress prevented leg- islative action on the immigration issue. March 5 went with four failed attempts to pass an immigration fi x, although a fed- eral district court ruling preserved the DACA program for the time being. To better understand why reforming immigration has been so contentious, it is useful to review the background 3 President Lyndon B. Johnson (left) speaks after signing the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 below the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island on October 3, 1965. Th e act granted Chinese immigrants equal status to that of European immigrants and replaced the national origins quota system with a preference system. (Lyndon B. Johnson Library/Yoichi R. Okamoto)