Former President Barack Obama took the extraordinary step in June 2012 of granting a quasi-legal status and issuing work permits to people who had illegally immigrated to the U.S. through no fault of their own. He did so by executive fiat rather than democratically because public opinion demanded it. It didn’t, and neither did voters’ representatives in Congress.

Obama’s favored group were given the flattering, idealistic, and presumably market-tested label “Dreamers.” They were people who had been brought into the country before 2007 as children by parents who overstayed visas or crossed the border illegally.