There is no good reason to deny permanent status to Dreamers. (Photo: Aaron Burden | Unsplash)
It wasn’t long ago that we awoke to images and stories of families separated at the border, of migrant children locked into dirty, crowded, chain-link pens. For many Americans, this was an alarming introduction to the politics of cruelty that have played out in different periods of American immigration history, but with particular force in the past few years.
Today that type of politics is moving back into the media spotlight. As I write this, it’s not yet clear whether DACA, the program created to protect from deportation the young people brought here as children, will last much longer. In response to a lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Texas and several other states, a federal judge ruled last year that the program was illegal, and his ruling was upheld this past October by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Unless legislation is passed during this year’s waning congressional session to extend the protections afforded to DACA recipients, the case may go to the Supreme Court, where its prospects would be dim.
If DACA is ended, it’s unlikely that the 590,000 young people currently protected by the program will be deported, but they would no longer have the federal protections that have allowed them to work and secure other benefits. They would be pushed back into the shadows and precarity of undocumented status.
That is where the politics of cruelty come in. For this particular kind of politics is not only about policies like family separation, which were intentionally designed to inflict suffering and ostensibly “deter” migrants from coming to the U.S. The politics of cruelty also incorporate a language, a discourse, that casts migrants in dehumanizing terms (“illegal aliens”), presents them as threats to Americans’ physical and economic security, and excludes any reference to America’s need for immigration to maintain a robust economy and revitalize communities.
There is every good reason to extend protection, indeed, permanent status, to DACA recipients, and no good reason to deny it. With the umbrella of the program protecting them since 2012, DACA recipients have been able to go to college, enter professional careers, start families, buy homes, serve as essential workers during the continuing pandemic, and pay their fair share of federal and state taxes.
In short, America is their home, and they have every right to a permanent status that legislation can bring. That is why major political organizations like the U.S. Conference of Mayors have supported such protections, and why business organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have called for legislative action on the recipients’ behalf. Polling data from recent years has consistently shown that a majority of American voters support the continuation of DACA or permanent status for DACA recipients.
Certainly, protecting DACA, or giving a pathway to permanent status for DACA recipients in this congressional session, represents a contraction of the original, ambitious Biden administration goal of extending a path to citizenship to the 11.5 million undocumented individuals in America. This contraction only goes to show the power of the opposition to substantive reform. Still, in light of this opposition, the achievement of legislated protection for 590,000 people would represent a significant accomplishment indeed.
As of now, a proposed “bipartisan framework,” co-created by senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), is floating in the Senate. It would provide a path to legalization for DACA recipients, but it would also be accompanied by border security measures that include an additional $25-$40 billion for increased staffing and pay raises for border agents. It also would provide for the creation of regional “processing centers” that would house asylum seekers and ostensibly expedite the processing of their asylum requests. Until such centers would be operational, a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 would remain in effect, turning migrants back to Mexico and preventing them from filing asylum claims. This policy had been set to expire this December 21st.
Protecting DACA recipients is a stand-alone human rights issue that should have no place in negotiations over border security, particularly when those negotiations involve the suppression of other migrants’ rights. That said, there remains formidable opposition even to the Sinema/Tillis framework, an opposition fortified by the filibuster rule that requires a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. If the current Congress, with its substantial Democratic House majority, fails to extend protection to DACA and its recipients, the failure will represent a victory for the politics of cruelty, a politics powered by demagoguery and the fears it generates.
It will mean, too, that the struggle for human rights will continue, sparked by the kind of organizing and truth-telling that helped push DACA into existence a decade ago. And it will mean, more clearly than ever, that it’s time for the filibuster, that onerous impediment to democracy, to be relegated to the dustbin of history, where it has long belonged.
Andrew Moss, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is an emeritus professor (English, nonviolence studies) at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
Joe Biden’s presidency — by all accounts — is on a ventilator right now, and many people want his administration to asphyxiate. He could save himself, and the country, by leading us toward an innovative reform of our immigration system.
Our current system is based on an outdated, anachronistic visa system that rewards “skills” deemed necessary for the development of the United States economy and society. Specialized engineers from Slovakia, research scientists from South Africa, and concert pianists from Paraguay have been able to visit here, stay here, and thrive. But the vast majority of the world’s population is “unskilled” and thus, the contemporary conundrum.
We can keep the current system intact and add in an “Americas exception,” which would acknowledge three realities. First, the USA shares a continent with Canada, Mexico, and seven nations of Central America. Second, those nations, with the exception of Canada, are significantly poorer, in real economic terms, than the USA. Third, we’ve intervened in virtually all of the nations mentioned above, mostly in a hostile, negative, and menacing military manner. I would extend my plan of prioritizing visas for people of the Americas to the Caribbean nations, especially Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Mexico is the first obvious nation to consider. About 44 percent of the population of 120 million are classified as poor. We share a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, a border that was artificially created in 1848 when the U.S. took 51 percent of Mexico’s territory in a war designed to … take Mexico’s territory. We wanted the land to extend cotton production into Texas and further west, and we wanted to extend our national border to the Pacific. We also wanted to extend slavery.
How have we responded to this history? By building a wall and insulting the people who live in Mexico, referring to them as “rapists and drug dealers.” The vast majority of Mexicans who come to the USA want to work here, send money back to loved ones in Mexico, and improve their standard of living. Let’s make it easier for them to come here: We offer very few legal visas to unskilled workers — maybe 5,000 for the entire world. We could change this by simply prioritizing Mexico and recognizing our historic ties to the country and our 19th century “grand theft (half) nation.”
Then there’s Guatemala. A fascinating new historical novel (Harsh Times) by the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa offers an unpleasant appraisal of the U.S. role in deposing the legitimately elected president there in 1954. Vargas Llosa — hardly a leftist — reminds us that the USA stalled a legitimate attempt at socioeconomic reform in the small Central American nation while supporting some of the most repressive, reprehensible people in the region. The legacy of our actions? Sadness, civil war, authoritarianism, and about 300,000 deaths from 1960 to the mid-1990s when peace accords were finally signed there. And wide-scale misery: About 54 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty.
We really do have an obligation to help the people of these places and we’ve certainly helped in many ways: Our nation has been generous with aid and support after natural disasters, we’ve offered people the opportunity to stay in the USA through TPS — “Temporary Protected Status” — designed for folks from countries ravaged by natural disasters and/or really absurd political policies (Haiti, Nicaragua, to name two). We also, in 2012, implemented a policy via presidential executive action called DACA, which protects kids who have come to the United States as infants with their parents. TPS and DACA are both “temporary” fixes — TPS is designated at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security. Both programs were attacked by a hostile Trump administration, both saved by the U.S. judiciary system.
We need permanent solutions to support immigrants — we should focus on supporting people who want to come here, work here, and help our economy and society. We have a special obligation to our neighbors to the south.
Without immigrants, we become Italy — an aging population, politically motivated low levels of immigration, escalating healthcare costs, followed by endless economic stagnation. The Italians, of course, did give us Michelangelo (we responded by gifting the world … Andy Warhol). But to avoid the socioeconomic Italianization of America, we have to bring in immigrants who want to work here, live here, and continue building our economy and society. Let’s truthfully study our history. Let’s work in collaboration with our neighbors to the south and break out of this politically motivated, unproductive, and unkind immigration impasse that’s distorting our economy and just might, sadly, suffocate the Biden administration.
Mayor Jim Strickland of Memphis, Mayor John Cooper of Nashville, and Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga joined mayors from 28 states in sending a letter to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for pathways to citizenship for Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, essential workers, and their families via budget reconciliation.
The letter comes 10 days after a controversial decision by a Texas Judge that ruled DACA unlawful, possibly putting 13,000 immigrants and their families in Tennessee at risk. The letter, which has 84 signatures from mayors around the United States, asks Congress to pass permanent protection for immigrants.
“We are proud of our Tennessee mayors for sticking up for the rights and protections of all Tennesseans,” said Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugees Rights Coalition (TIRRC). “DACA has always been vulnerable and it never should have come to this. We’ve been fighting for years and we will continue to organize to win permanent immigration relief for the thousands of Tennesseans who are undocumented. Congress and the Biden-Harris administration must meet this moment and deliver citizenship for our communities.”
TIRRC is a statewide immigrant and refugee-led collaboration whose mission is to empower immigrants and refugees throughout Tennessee.
Frankie Paz and Jocelyn Vazquez, two Dreamers,
have made Memphis their home since
their last interview with the Flyer five years ago. (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Bright-eyed, fresh-faced, impossibly optimistic — they stand in their caps and gowns on the cusp of achieving their hopes and dreams, ready to take on the world. That is the vision of the Dreamers — the young immigrants brought to this country as children, planning to make their way in the world, if given the opportunity.
Twenty years ago, the bipartisan Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) proposed the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) to create a path to citizenship for Dreamers. On June 15, 2012, two years after Congress was unable to bypass a Senate filibuster and pass the DREAM Act, President Obama announced his executive action, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and said:
“These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents — sometimes even as infants — and often have no idea that they’re undocumented until they apply for a job or a driver’s license or a college scholarship.”
Just over five and a half years ago, on January 14, 2016, the Memphis Flyer published a cover story titled “American Dreamers,” which featured two DACA students, Jocelyn Vazquez and Frankie Paz, who lived here in Memphis. At the time, Vazquez was a senior high school student at Immaculate Conception High School in Midtown and Paz was a first-year student at Christian Brothers University. Just kids!
But like so many DACA recipients, Vazquez and Paz are no longer kids
For Vazquez (left) and Paz, Memphis is home — a place to grow with family, contribute to their communities, and follow their dreams. (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Dream On
Vazquez and Paz are still living here in Memphis. While the optimism still shines, it has been tempered by lessons we all learn when becoming adults. However, their particular paths to adulthood have been made more difficult by the political realities of the past five years, including a viciously anti-immigration administration in Washington, an insurrection merely five months ago, and a seemingly dim future for the kind of political reform needed to modernize our immigration system.
DACA has given hundreds of thousands of young people the opportunity to stay in the U.S., study here, work here, and contribute to the nation. President Trump tried to rescind DACA in 2017 during the first year of his presidency, but the courts intervened. On June 18, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled against the administration, finding its actions to be “arbitrary and capricious.” The 643,000 young people — their friends and family, teachers and employers — breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Durbin has not forgotten about the legislation he introduced 20 years ago. The Illinois Democrat remains determined to see the DREAM Act pass the Senate, and, speaking from the Senate floor on January 21, 2021, the day after President Biden restored DACA via executive action, he said, “Without DACA, hundreds of thousands of talented young people who have grown up in our country cannot continue their work and risk deportation every single day.” But even he recognizes how the prolonged battle has occurred while the lives of these kids continue to evolve, noting, “These young people, known as Dreamers, have lived in America since they were children, built their lives here, and are American in every way except for their immigration status.”
Jocelyn Vazquez (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Making Opportunity Work
For Jocelyn Vazquez, DACA has allowed her the opportunity to study and work with some protection, though she (like all DACA recipients) must re-apply to the program every two years at a cost of $495. Thanks to DACA, according to Vazquez, “I’ve been able to do something with my college degree. I have a driver’s license and a sense of protection.”
She graduated from Rhodes College in May 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and is now an eighth-grade English Language Arts teacher at Kirby Middle School. She takes a visible pride in the connections she has established with her students, a process that has developed despite the multiple challenges of being a first-year teacher, virtual teaching, and then switching to in-person teaching this past March.
Frankie Paz (Photo: Justin Fox Burks)
Frankie Paz began college at Christian Brothers University here in Memphis in the fall of 2015; he earned a full scholarship through an arrangement to help Dreamers, offered through an outside foundation in partnership with CBU. Paz studied business with a concentration in sports management but was unable to complete his degree due to shifting family dynamics, health concerns, and work.
However, CBU represented a fantastic opportunity for Paz. On campus, he met supportive people in the administration and on faculty, but he also learned that he was largely on his own — as a first-generation college student, he had little family support and now realizes he was growing up and becoming an adult. “I began to network and learned how to meet people, talk to them, and came to understand that interacting with a wider community is fundamental for success.”
From CBU, Paz took a job with United Airlines. He interviewed for a ramp agent position, but the interviewer quickly saw Paz’s potential and placed him in customer service. United management wanted to move him to Denver permanently, but Paz, in consultation with his girlfriend (now wife), decided their future was with family here in Memphis. He is now working at a company owned by his father-in-law that specializes in customized construction work.
While these professional paths might imitate those of any young Memphian, President Trump’s attempt to roll back DACA presented serious stressors for Vazquez and Paz. Vazquez remembers the tensions associated with waiting on the Supreme Court decision in 2020: “The long three-year period between Trump’s attempt to rescind DACA and the June 2020 ruling created a constant stream of anxiety.”
Vazquez adds that Trump’s anti-DACA rhetoric shaped her thinking about money and savings: “When you don’t know if protections offered here in the U.S. and the safety of home and community will be uprooted from one day to the next, you try to save more money — you never really feel completely safe.”
Mauricio Calvo, executive director at Latino Memphis, underscores Vazquez’s sentiments. He worries about the tremendous human potential that’s wasted as DACA is rescinded, then brought back — i.e., as the political process takes precedence over the needs and aspirations of young people living in our nation. “These DACA recipients have been in a state of limbo for so long. It’s a challenge, and it means people have to make really difficult decisions,” Calvo says. “Does a person decide not to attend law school, given that there is a question about whether she could actually practice law once she graduates? Does a company pass over someone for a promotion because there is a question of what will happen with DACA?”
Paz does not dwell too much on DACA, but it is always lurking in the shadows. The 24-year-old comments how “the threats during the last few years were always there.” He diligently renewed his DACA eligibility documents this past January. He followed the 2020 presidential election, and though he cannot vote, he supported the candidate “who I thought would work to bring the nation together.” Stating the obvious, Paz says, “There’s just too much division here.”
Making Memphis Home
Family dynamics define the day-to-day life of Vazquez here in Memphis. Vazquez’s family has taken full advantage of various opportunities here in the U.S. For example, her younger sister — following in Vazquez’s footsteps — graduated from Rhodes College on May 15th with a bachelor’s in pyschology.
Vazquez’s mother no longer cleans homes for a living; instead, she opened a small restaurant here in the city, reflecting the determination, drive, and resilience of our neighbors. Her father has shifted his work from construction to property management and real estate. Her parents, especially her father, still retain the belief of so many first-generation immigrants that if you work hard enough in America, you will be successful. Vazquez’s experiences and the tenuousness of DACA, however, have left her a little bit skeptical of that notion.
To a close observer of experiences like Vazquez’s and Paz’s, “potential” is the word that best defines DACA recipients. Daniel Connolly, a reporter and author, has been covering immigration and the local Hispanic community for more than a decade. Connolly authored the critically acclaimed 2016 work of immersive journalism, The Book of Isaias: A Child of Hispanic Immigrants Seeks His Own America, which is a moving account of Kingsbury High School student Isaias Ramos and his family as they navigate life in the U.S. — in Memphis.
“These young people — it’s in the interest of society to help develop their potential,” says Connolly. The hope, optimism, human capacity, and youthful promise of kids like Paz, who was also featured in his book, continue to inspire Connolly.
Developing and nurturing the potential of DACA youth makes sense for purely practical reasons: The 643,000 current DACA recipients arrived here on average when they were seven years of age and have lived more than 20 years in the United States. They are the parents of 250,000 U.S. citizen children. It is estimated that, over the next decade, Dreamers with DACA who continue to work legally in the United States will contribute $433 billion to this nation’s GDP and will pay more than $12 billion into Social Security.
While the Dream Act languishes in Congress — 20 years on — and the politicians in Washington throw DACA around like the political football it has become, the young DACA kids grow older and become adults. “While the political fight goes on, the DACA youth are moving on with their lives,” notes Connolly.
The journalist gently brings up the Samuel Huntington paradox. In 2004, Harvard political scientist and cultural theorist Samuel P. Huntington (d. 2008) published a polemical book, titled Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity. Huntington predicted a total social, linguistic, and cultural bifurcation in the U.S. based on immigration and data trends from Latin America. “Samuel Huntington,” comments Connolly, “wrote of a societal split and tried to frighten us by writing of a Spanish-speaking minority that never assimilates.” The journalist continues, “It’s actually the opposite of that — people are quickly finding their place in society, and this is a very hopeful sign for this nation.”
Up until a couple years ago, Paz lived with his mother in Memphis, but he moved out on his own and settled in an apartment complex in Midtown. Ironically, his neighbor in the same complex was Daniel Connolly. This was a certain sign for the Memphis journalist that Huntington was simply wrong. Integration was prevailing past the Harvard theorist’s bifurcation.
Paz — a newlywed — recently moved to East Memphis with his wife and has grown through his experiences. He has learned how the concept of family expands and evolves as the years progress and told us about gaining expertise in “budgeting, how to live and share with another person, how to be a better person.”
Vazquez said she loves Memphis and wants to stay here as an educator. “I lived in a big city [Houston, Texas], and a small rural town in Mississippi — Memphis seems like a perfect balance between those two extremes.” She is getting ready to move into a rental home near the Crosstown Concourse in the city she has chosen as her home.
Paz, together with his wife, plans to work in property investment here in the city; Memphis is home. “I see such great potential in this city, so much improvement and such opportunity for growth.” Paz has been here for a dozen years; as a two-year-old, he traveled with his family from Honduras to California and then to Memphis.
Calvo reminds us why it is so critically important to listen to the stories of Vazquez and Paz. “You know, generally, as a society, we become less sympathetic to people as they grow older,” states the Latino Memphis director, a bit wearily. “We need to understand that DACA didn’t solve the larger problem, it merely cracked the door, and that door can be closed. It’s cruel to show them the possibilities in America while not finishing the [legislative] job and giving them a full and unhindered chance at life.”
Like so many DACA recipients, Paz and Vazquez continue to move forward and have grown from young idealistic teenagers into adults confronting the realities of life’s challenges. They are our neighbors. They have chosen Memphis. As Paz says, “I can see myself staying here. I have only vague memories of Honduras. I want to build something in Memphis. … I want to contribute to Memphis.”
Ten years ago, 41 senators voted down the “Dream Act” which — if passed — would have allowed young people not born in America but brought here by migrant parents the opportunity to apply for U.S. Citizenship. Last week, the United States Supreme Court held that the Trump Administration’s decision to end the Obama-era protections for these vulnerable young people was “arbitrary and capricious.” Mr. Trump may not begin deporting these so-called “Dreamers,” at least for now.
In 2012, with the failure of Congress to pass the Dream Act, and right before his election to a second term, Mr. Obama took executive action in what is commonly referred to as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This action acknowledged the political reality of that time, i.e. that if the Congress would not act to protect children from deportation, he would.
[pullquote-2] In Tennessee, there are about 8,500 DACA recipients; in Memphis, approximately 1,800. They are young people who are not U.S. citizens but have lived here most of their lives, and hope to stay here. They attend public schools and universities, they serve in the armed forces, and they are working in healthcare as the nation faces the COVID-19 crisis.
Toward the end of his presidency, President Obama attempted to expand DACA and implement DAPA, which offered deferred action (concerning deportation) and some benefits, such as work authorization to the parents of DACA recipients.
Fast forward to 2015. Candidate Trump began his political campaign, as we remember all too well, by demonizing immigrants, especially undocumented persons, and with laser-like focus attempted to overturn any action taken by President Obama. During the notorious speech announcing his candidacy, the future president characterized the undocumented by saying, “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Thus, the battle was engaged.
Upon assuming the presidency in January 2017, Trump continued his anti-immigrant rhetoric. In 2018, the president pushed to end DACA, but did not want to rescind it unilaterally, since 76 percent of the American population supports DACA.
Trump’s inaction, coupled with an increasingly vocal political base, together with anti-immigrant hardliners in his administration, including Stephen Miller, created a mini-judicial revolt when seven states, led by Texas, argued that Obama had overstepped his authority in signing DAPA and the expanded DACA. The Fifth Circuit ruled in their favor — that the Obama administration had overreached by offering benefits to DAPA recipients.
Based on this ruling, the Trump administration quickly (and haphazardly) declared that Obama’s 2012 implementation of DACA was illegal and announced its end. This ultimately led to a variety of legal challenges — the result being the 5-4 Supreme Court decision on June 18th declaring the Trump administration’s attempt to overturn Obama’s executive order as “arbitrary and capricious.” In other words, the administration failed to engage in “reasoned decision making” in coming to its resolution to rescind DACA.
Ironically, the surprise 5-4 decision (with Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority) was not a declaration of immigrant rights, but a finding of a somewhat mundane violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. In arriving at this outcome, Justice Roberts cited a landmark case near and dear to the people of Memphis. Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe (1971), which declared that administrative decisions could not offer “post-hoc rationalization;” in other words, evidence and arguments cannot be added in after the fact as efforts to bolster earlier decisions, which the Supreme Court found objectionable in both cases.
[pullquote-1] Yet, preservation of DACA was never intended as an end in itself; DACA was seen as a protective bridge toward Congressional action. DACA provides no lasting relief for its beneficiaries who continue to live, learn, and work in a quasi-legal status that provides no permanent protections.
While we celebrate this temporary reprieve, it is only temporary. This November, with possibilities of a new president and stronger leadership in Congress, we could see some hope for Dreamers. They want to live here in America in peace — free to work, study, and contribute to our nation as we struggle forward together. Only voters, together with the government we select in the fall, can offer the affirmation of rights and relief that Dreamers deserve.
Tennessee DACA recipients rally in front of U.S. Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court began hearing arguments Tuesday in the case that will decide the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program.
Twelve DACA recipients — or Dreamers — from Tennessee joined thousands more outside of the Supreme Court to rally in support of the program while the nine justices heard arguments inside.
DACA was created in 2012 to provide temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrant youth, enabling them to attend school and work.
Yuritza Sanchez, a 20-year-old student from Memphis was one of the Dreamers rallying outside the court Tuesday. Sanchez, said she came to the United States when she was three years old.
“Having DACA has meant the world to me because I can accomplish my dreams, have a good job with benefits, and finally get my drivers license, which was big for my family,” Sanchez said. “As the first person who could drive without fear of deportation, it’s made our whole family a little bit safer.”
Sanchez said she would not only like to DACA to be preserved, but she also wants to see a more permanent solution for the future.
“I hope the Congress and Supreme Court see all of us here and that they understand that this is about our lives,” Sanchez said. “We need a permanent solution — without compromising our families or our communities.”
Sanchez’s sister, Kristal Sanchez, was also there Tuesday. Kristal, a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Memphis, said receiving DACA protection has been “transformative.” She said it allowed her to work as well as attend college on a scholarship.
[pullquote-1]
“I’m here representing my community and all DACA recipients from Memphis,” Kristal said. “It’s powerful to be here with thousands of DACA recipients, and I hope the Supreme Court justices see what’s at stake. I hope the justices make the right decisions, and that they preserve DACA because this is our home.”
In 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order terminating the program. That decision was challenged in lower courts and blocked.
Now, three cases, consolidated into one are before the Supreme Court will decide whether or not the president has the authority to legally end DACA.
The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in 2020. If DACA does end, about 700,000 recipients — 8,000 Tennesseeans — would lose the right to work and protection from deportation.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in 2020 will define our nation,” the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition said in a Tuesday statement. “If the Supreme Court justices let the Trump Administration end DACA, they will be putting the lives of millions in immediate danger. Without protection, DACA recipients could lose their homes and their livelihoods.”
A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to hear a case that ruled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unlawful is a small victory for local DACA recipients.
After President Donald Trump’s administration announced the end of DACA, an Obama-era program that provides protection for about 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children, two lower courts blocked the government from ending it.
Trump’s administration went directly to the Supreme Court to try to get those rulings overturned, skipping a federal court of appeals. The high court ruled Monday that an appeals court should hear the case first. This means DACA won’t be rescinded by Trump’s stated deadline of March 5.
However, Gina John, advocacy coordinator at Latino Memphis, said the fight isn’t over.
“There is still no permanent protections for DACA recipients and without it, the same patterns of traumatizing young people with the threat of deportation will continue,” John said. “This decision is a step in the right direction but finding a legislative solution is the end goal.”
When Trump’s administration announced the end of the program in September, he gave Congress until March to construct new immigration legislation. Now, that date is null and void, and DACA recipients will continue to be protected likely for another year.
Stephanie Teatro, co-executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition said the Supreme Court’s decision is only a temporary victory for Tennessee’s 8,400 DACA recipients.
“The court’s decision allows some young immigrants to renew their DACA, for now, but it does not resolve the crisis at hand,” Teatro said. “DACA recipients, their families, and their employees shouldn’t live from deadline to deadline with their futures in limbo.
The nation has just witnessed another orgy of political partisanship on steroids — the 69-hour governmental shutdown resulting from a standoff between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, with the GOP members carrying water for the immigration hardliners in President Donald Trump’s White House.
The ostensible issues involved in the standoff were hardly trivial, with congressional Democrats basing their position on a determination to see the passage of enabling legislation for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) and Republicans being just as determined to keep anything involving DACA out of the continuing resolution bill that was being prepared to maintain the operations of the federal government.
What underscores the absurdity of the conflict is the fact that, by general consent, clear majorities existed in both parties favoring DACA, which would shield from deportation and other penalties the children, many of them now grown and active participants in the economic and civic life of America, who were brought here by parents who were themselves illegal aliens.
Legislation to restore DACA was made necessary when Trump last year arbitrarily revoked the executive order by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, that had established the program. Trump, who has an obvious fetish for eradicating any possible vestige of Obama’s two terms, claimed (and claims) that he, too, favors the concept of DACA but contended at the time that only Congress should authorize the program and set a deadline of March 4th for legislative reauthorization.
Basing their stand on a distrust of Trump’s long-evident proclivity for reversing his stated positions regularly and whimsically, the Democrats obviously wished to nail the issue down as far in advance of the President’s arbitrary deadline as possible.
Republicans, taking their cue from the aforementioned administration hardliners, resolved to resist dealing with DACA without a clear go-ahead from Trump, who has insisted on coupling DACA reauthorization with Congressional appropriations to enact his Great Wall fantasy on the border with Mexico, as well as on approval of an assortment of other harsh anti-immigrant positions. Hence, after some typical back-and-forthing from Trump that made hash of attempts to negotiate the matter, the impasse.
Disagreements are inevitable within a democratic framework, but they should be based upon legitimate divisions of opinion, not on Us-Against-Them invocations of party loyalty, which was so obviously the cause of the DACA standoff. The governmental shutdown was fairly quickly ended when the Democrats blinked and concurred with a GOP formula for a continuing resolution to extend to February 8th, at which time the DACA issue will still need resolution, and more urgently. To everybody’s shame, party was put before country.
Sixteen years ago, Senators Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch introduced the DREAM Act on the Senate Floor. Had it become law, the DREAM Act would have offered permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship for young people who graduate from our high schools, have clean criminal records, and want to live and prosper in the U.S.A. These non-citizen kids were (in most cases) brought here by parents fleeing either economic insecurity in Mexico or socio-political violence in Central America and other places in the Americas and the world.
Since the United States shares a 2,000-mile border with Mexico, most of the Dreamers (as kids eligible for protection under the DREAM Act are called) are from that country. When the DREAM Act came up for a Senate vote in late 2010, it was killed by 41 Senators; three Republicans voted for the bill, but two — Senator (now Attorney General) Jeff Sessions (AL) and Lindsey Graham (SC) — campaigned vigorously against the bill, and they prevailed.
Fast forward to 2012 and a tough political campaign between the sitting president, Barack Obama, and former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney. Obama wisely chose to fortify his base with Hispanics and others, and he signed an executive order called DACA, for “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.”
This temporary “fix” allowed young people who had been denied congressional protection through the DREAM Act to apply for “deferred action” concerning deportation proceeding by submitting to a background check and paying a processing fee.
So far, about one million people have taken advantage of DACA; they can attend college, they can work, they can serve in the U.S. armed forces. Additionally, they can buy automobiles, pay rent, contribute to the tax base of cities and towns, and apply their talents and energies in ways too numerous to mention here.
Five years later, we’ve inaugurated a president who championed an anti-immigration platform and promised a problem-solving “beautiful” wall that would separate the U.S. from our Mexican and Central American neighbors.
Apparently prompted by his base — represented in this case by nine attorney generals from conservative states and a looming September lawsuit — to end Obama’s executive order, President Trump announced (through Attorney General Sessions, who gave a disconcertingly giddy but remarkably revealing press briefing) that DACA would not accept new applications and would, essentially, expire six months from now. Trump then kicked the conversation back to Congress, instructing them to come up with a permanent fix (i.e., an ad hoc law) before DACA expires.
Enter Chuck and Nancy. President Trump, since assuming the presidency, has nourished the base with talk of walls, border security and protecting American jobs from rapacious foreigners. But by feeding Chinese food to Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leaders, at the White House last week, the president now seems to understand that lasting policies cannot be made exclusively through the medium of an angry partisan base representing a fraction of the electorate.
Will the DREAM Act become law in the near future? We hope so, but we also know that, for years, the Dreamers have been savaged by detractors as law breakers, jobs takers, and “bad hombres.”
We believe Republicans at the base will turn on their elected officials who support the DREAM Act and, with the Republican Party in control of the House, Senate, and executive branch (plus the majority of statehouses in the nation), it’s refreshing to watch the head of that party, Mr. Trump, offer support for a “deal” that would permanently regularize the immigration status of the Dreamers. Luckily, Trump may have cared more about making a deal than the risk of offending the “Fifth Avenue Phalange” — i.e., those members of his base who, putatively, would support him even if he should walk onto Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.
Let’s hope no shots are fired, and let’s hope that we have a permanent Congressional solution to 16 years of uncertainty for good kids who want to live here, work here, and study in the America that has always been a nation of opportunity for immigrants.
Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board chair at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
Five days after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, the cast of SNL parodied the electoral upset by toasting “the Latinos.” Ironically, of course, the Latinos neither delivered the all-important state of Florida for Secretary Clinton nor voted enthusiastically for the Democratic candidate, when compared to other elections. Many stayed home on Election Day. Thirty percent voted for Mr. Trump.
We’re guilty, with others over the years, of supporting a fairly simple reductionist argument and referred to Latinos as a monolithic voting bloc. The fact is the Latin American presence in the United States is complex and extraordinarily varied in terms of race, culture, history, place of origin, educational attainment, and economic status.
For example, Puerto Ricans (U.S. citizens since 1917) who moved to New York City in the 1960s aligned traditionally with big-city, Democratic Party agendas and priorities. The grandchildren of those early migrants and more recent arrivals to the mainland (many of whom now live in and around the Orlando, Florida, area) are no longer tied to the old-line Democratic platform. Some, in fact, vote Republican based on social issues (opposition to Roe v. Wade, discomfort with same-sex marriage), and Puerto Ricans who favor statehood for the island support Republican candidates who agree with that agenda.
Many older Cuban-Americans in Florida came out to support Donald Trump, not because they liked him but because they traditionally vote Republican. They also loath to support Democratic candidates — some still blame President Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion for the growth of Communism on the island. Thus, they have been hostile to President Obama’s normalization of diplomatic relations with the island nation. They were unimpressed with Obama’s March, 2016 Cuba visit, which featured a “bromance” with Raúl Castro; the two men sat together during a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays’ minor league team and the Cuban national team.
Politics is one thing, governing another. We’re fearful that President Trump will order immigration enforcement into communities shortly after he takes office; during his first nationally televised interview since the November 8th election, the president-elect stated his intention to deport or incarcerate 2 or 3 million people.
This is worrisome, because immigrants are entitled to due process, and deportation proceedings must be conducted fairly through a federal immigration judge of whom there are fewer than 250 nationwide, all with jam-packed dockets.
Moreover, President Obama has already deported more immigrants than all other U.S. presidents combined. It is not clear where Trump came up with the 2 to 3 million figure he cited or how he’ll reach that deportation objective, given Obama’s deportation track record.
Trump’s “deportation force” sounds a little too 20th-century European for our sensibilities, but we’re relieved to see that many police departments around the nation have re-stated their commitment to “sanctuary city status,” i.e. local police officers will not act as federal deportation agents, because they want to preserve local public safety and harmony.
One of the most heart-wrenching potential effects of Trump’s election involves undocumented youth who have received protection under Obama’s 2012 executive action known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This program has allowed good, hardworking young people who were brought to the USA as children by their parents to apply for “relief” from deportation proceedings.
About 750,000 young people, the so-called dreamers, have been granted protection under this program. With a stroke of Trump’s pen, though, DACA could die. Eliminating this program would represent a catastrophic setback for kids who are American in every sense of the word, except for their immigration status. We really don’t want to see the president-elect begin his administration by punishing hundreds of thousands of innocent kids.
Those who didn’t vote for Trump — around 2 million more Americans than voted for him — are deeply concerned about this tumultuous transition and worry that the nation is turning an uncharitable, cruel gaze toward our immigrant brothers and sisters.
Election Day anger and apathy has delivered us a Trump presidency. We can’t allow that same apathy to tear apart our communities should Trump try to enforce promises from a quixotic, cruel campaign that won at the polls but tossed the collective serenity of a nation into the sea.
Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney and board member at Latino Memphis; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
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