DACA uncertainty: Young immigrants’ future remains in limbo

For more than a half-million young immigrants nationwide protected from deportation under a controversial program known as DACA, the date March 5 has been a big “X” on the calendar through six months of vitriolic political debate and legal wrangling.

That date — Monday — took on special significance when the Trump administration in September announced it planned to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which covers many immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children. After that, they no longer would be able to renew their participation.

Now, the day will come and go, without change. Federal court orders have blocked the administration’s move, and most of these immigrants, largely in their teens and 20s, will be able to stay in this country — for now.

But with the shaky status quo comes much uncertainty.

They have no way of knowing whether their permission to stay will later be extended or rescinded. In bitter, polarizing feuds over immigration, Congress has not coalesced around a compromise to give them a path toward permanent residence.

“We are living our lives day to day, just waiting and waiting and waiting,” said Josselin Paz, 20, who grew up on Long Island and is a junior at SUNY Old Westbury studying industrial and labor relations.

Paz, a Salvadoran immigrant, is but one of more than 43,000 approved DACA recipients in New York who could lose the shield from enforcement over the next couple of years. She has about a year left before the work permit she gets under DACA expires.

It seems pointless to think about the future until the matter is resolved, she said.

“You have passed through all these emotions, that at some point it’s kind of numbing,” said Paz, who was 3 when she came with her parents to the United States on visas that have since expired.

She has worked to excel in school, holding multiple jobs to pay tuition without financial aid, and she believes she belongs here. “I would love to see something happen that would ultimately lead to citizenship and doesn’t criminalize my parents,” Paz said.

DACA recipients such as Paz are part of the larger population known as Dreamers, an estimated 3.2 million young immigrants who came and stayed in the country as minors, not necessarily knowing they were in violation of immigration laws.

When Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he gave mixed signals on where he stood regarding the Dreamers’ status and continuation of the DACA program, which was established in 2012 under an executive action by President Barack Obama.

Critics of the program and proponents of strengthened immigration policy saw it as a way of circumventing immigration laws and granting amnesty to a select group.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at a Sept. 5 news conference, declared an end to DACA, saying the policy was an unconstitutional exercise of executive authority. The administration’s action gave about 154,000 program recipients across the country, whose permits were set to expire, a chance to renew before the March 5 deadline.

The battle regarding the DACA recipients’ long-term status reached a stalemate as recent court orders by federal judges in San Francisco and Brooklyn blocked the administration’s action and kept the program in place. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case and bypass the lower courts as the Trump administration had sought, raising the potential for a protracted legal fight.

“It’s not clear right now what will happen next,” said Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan organization in Washington, D.C. “Unfortunately, my best guess is that we are going to see a period of inaction.”

The government’s count of the number of immigrants in the DACA program shifts every three months as recipients’ two-year permits expire and the requests of those who file for renewal are considered and tallied.

In its most recent statistics, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported last week that nearly 683,000 of those immigrants — who are from a variety of countries such as Mexico, El Salvador and South Korea — are due to see their DACA permits expire from January of this year to January 2020. Close to 16,000 of them already had renewal applications pending as of Jan. 31.

DACA has been a controversial program from the get-go. When Obama authorized it nearly six years ago, he spoke of his frustration with the lack of progress on a larger immigration reform effort.

Recipients of the program had to meet multiple criteria for a chance to stay, such as being a student or having graduated or served in the armed forces. They were able to register, pay fees and receive work permits, which opened the doors for them to work legally and obtain driver’s licenses.

After the Trump administration’s announcement that it planned to end the program, the issue gained such prominence that it caused a brief government shutdown in January, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats sought legalization for those immigrants.

Trump responded with an offer at his State of the Union address later that month to give “a path to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who were brought here by their parents at a young age.” The concession came with proposals to curtail both legal and illegal immigration by funding “a great wall on the southern border,” ending a visa lottery program and limiting family sponsorship of new immigrants to close relatives.

That led to a Senate vote on Feb. 15 on three proposals to legalize Dreamers, one by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that largely adopted Trump’s immigration framework; a plan by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.) that included funding to study border security; and a bipartisan compromise by Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Angus King (I-Maine), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and others, that combined funding for the border wall with a path to legal status for Dreamers.

All those plans failed and the debate devolved into finger-pointing.

The day after the vote, Trump tweeted: “Cannot believe how BADLY DACA recipients have been treated by the Democrats . . . totally abandoned!”

Schumer, in a statement sent to Newsday on Feb. 16, criticized Trump for sinking the bipartisan compromise. “This vote is proof that President Trump’s plan will never become law. If he would stop torpedoing bipartisan efforts, a good bill would pass,” Schumer said.

Since then, the issue hasn’t gained traction in the other chamber of Congress.

“There’s not a lot to suggest that the House has an appetite to take up a solution,” Gelatt said, although she added that the outcome of the federal court cases “would put more pressure on Congress.”

The push for a legislative solution enjoys support among most Long Island representatives, with Reps. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City) and Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) having said they would support versions of the Dream Act, legislation dating back to 2001 that would create a path to legal status for young immigrants who were brought here illegally or who overstayed visas. And Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) is co-sponsoring with Rice a bipartisan bill offering legalization and bolstering border security.

“The American people want us to solve this problem that President Trump created, and if we don’t do it soon we’re going to see young, hardworking, law-abiding students, workers and service members handcuffed and kicked out of the only country they’ve ever really known,” Rice said in a statement.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) has expressed misgivings about granting legal status, but said he remains open to proposals.

“Many of these children involuntarily came to our country very young, have been here for a long time, go through our education system, love our country and are looking to stay here and greatly contribute to our economy and nation’s future,” Zeldin said in a statement. “What I struggle with the most is how you can possibly allow someone illegally in our country to be given preference over someone who is . . . following the rules and respecting our laws” and waiting their turn to migrate legally.

King said that “it’s important both morally and politically to get it done” for Dreamers who were brought to this country as children. He sees a legislative deal as an achievable goal.

“Think how far they’ve come. Democrats never wanted a wall and they are willing to put money up for the wall. Most Republicans never really cared about DACA and now they are willing to go from 700,000 to 1.8 million” people on a program, King said. “To me, there has to be a way to make this work.”

Some on the side of stronger immigration enforcement would like to see the House vote on DACA, and they favor a bill by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that includes more enforcement, border security funding and immigration status checks on workers.

“People support securing the border; they support keeping illegal aliens from taking jobs; they don’t think it’s a good idea to grant sanctuary to people, especially criminal aliens; and most people don’t think chain migration makes sense,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group in Washington, D.C., that seeks reduced immigration.

Advocacy on behalf of immigrants is expected to continue as well, with those groups shifting their pressure to the House of Representatives, though they acknowledge that no plan would move without Trump’s backing.

“We have been collectively working very closely on trying to get Congress to act,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, a Los Angeles-based group involved in the DACA lawsuit in New York. “At the end of the day, it really is going to depend on whether President Trump actually wants a solution or not” as the fight comes down to “what it means to be an American and who is worthy to be an American.”