Varinia Sandino holds her son, Zachary, as she watches President Obama’s televised immigration speech at Casa de Maryland in Hyattsville, Md., on Nov. 20. Obama’s sweeping changes to the U.S. immigration system could shield nearly 5 million people from deportation. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Tina Griego, a reporter for Storyline, has covered immigration for more than a decade as a columnist for the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Read more immigration stories here.
Last week, President Obama did what he promised. He tinkered around the edges of a crippled immigration system. Temporarily — until the next president comes into office and makes his or her own decision about granting protection from deportation and equally temporary work authorization to millions living here illegally. Or until Congress — in whose hands the power to do something lasting lies — is finally goaded into action.
By then, we’ll have several million people who will have responded, with equal parts joy and apprehension, to the call of “come out, come out, wherever you are” and the offer to walk in the bright light of opportunity. That it could all unravel is a risk many will take, which says something of the long-term toll exacted by living a life darting through shadows. Executive action buys time. A couple of protected years with their children. A couple years to get out of a crappy job into a better-paying one.
What we have is a temporary solution, clad in hyperbole and politicking, dwarfed by the scale of an entrenched problem.
The heart of the president’s offer, available in the spring, is expected to reach at least 4 million unauthorized immigrants, which, by the way, includes both those who crossed the border illegally and those who entered the country legally and then stayed in the U.S. after they were supposed to go. The latter would be ones who fly 30,000 feet above any fence, drone or immigration agent at the border where, as the Migration Policy Institute tells us, we are already spending more than we spend on the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives combined.
Only undocumented parents who have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents are eligible. Only those who have lived in this country for at least five years need apply. This leaves out several million people who will watch this from the sidelines, some wondering how they can get in on the deal.
This isn’t amnesty, not even close. Deferred action – the technical term here – hangs on the word “deferred.” It delays enforcement and/or prosecution. It says, essentially, you can stay and we’ll look the other way as long as you keep your nose clean. It does not grant legal residency. It does not give cuts in the unconscionably long lines where families of legal immigrants have been waiting for years. The line people want to put illegal immigrants behind does not exist.
Those who do not have the family relations, the wealth or the skills that would allow them to immigrate legally, have no alternate visa for which to line up and apply. “We have never had a visa for full-time, year-round, nonprofessional workers,” says Denver immigration attorney Joy Athanasiou. Casting around for reasons we have the illegal immigration we do? That’s one place to start.
What this president would do, then, is create a waiting room occupied by a temporary class of unauthorized immigrant who are offered protection and work permission, but not the rights or privileges of a lawful resident.
The reality is that many families will get a temporary reprieve and many more won’t. Our labor needs and visa supply will continue to bear no relation to one another. The backlog in family visas will continue to act as a disincentive to do things the right way. Our farms and dairies will continue to rely upon a workforce sprinkled liberally with unauthorized workers and they still won’t be able to find enough workers. The layers of tile and hangers of drywall with no children, but dreams of retiring back home in a two-story house next to a lime tree, will still come illegally if a job is in the offing.
We will keep continuing immigration court cases into 2018 because our courts are backlogged. We will continue to limp along on the framework of immigration laws created in 1952 and 1965, laws to which we have added a dizzying layer of rules and regulations giving birth to so many unintended consequences that “even an individual who should be eligible under our basic system gets left out because they turned 21 or because they got married or because they went home for their grandfather’s funeral or because their parent died,” Athanasiou says.
The legal immigrant families I talked to after the president’s announcement were disappointed and angry. The families of undocumented immigrants were excited. Text messages came with many exclamation points attached.
“Better than nothing,” a young recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals tells me, because her siblings are citizens and now her mom and dad, here since 2001, will be able to apply for deferred action. A step in the right direction, says another, whose parents, 25-year-residents of this country, will also qualify.
They know it for what it is, a bone tossed in their direction for political reasons and maybe personal reasons and even, quite possibly, for principled ones: A promise made and kept. They’ll take it because they’ve lived here long enough to know opportunity does not lie around every corner and when it shows up at the door, you do what this land demands in pursuit of success: Take it and hang on tight.
~p1.jpg&w=60&h=60)
~p1.jpg&w=138&h=92)
