What to do with the DACA families?

A solution must be found before families are torn asunder

I’m reading more and more opinion columns these days about the DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — children, or the Dreamers if you’re so inclined to call them. The fixes run the gamut from total amnesty to deportation. As usual, there is a lot of gray in between all the black and white, and that’s what I want to talk about.

Here are the facts: The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security announced on June 15, 2012, that certain people who came to the United States illegally as children and were able to meet certain guidelines could ask that their deportation be halted for two years, subject to renewal. This was an illegal action by President Obama, who, according to immigration law, is only allowed to intervene in individual cases, not with whole groups of people. There were approximately 700,000 minor children in that group, and their status was not made legal, but their removal was put on hold. The full list of requirements for DACAs are on the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services’ website: www.uscis.gov/archive/ consideration-deferredaction-childhood-arrivals-daca.

Most of these young people have registered under the DACA program and have received an Employment Authorization Document that allows them to work here. The immigration service is not accepting any more applications for this document. I might add that there is no protection for the parents that brought them here. We must solve this problem before we tackle comprehensive immigration reform, which is a much more complex issue. But staying with DACA, there are conflicting viewpoints. Most people seem to favor this solution: make them all legal by giving them permanent residency status — a “green card” — which gives them the same status as persons who stood in line, some for years, around the world to get theirs. Give them an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number or Social Security number that allows them to work. So far, so good — for most people.

It all breaks down when immigrants’ rights groups and the far left insist that the DACAs be given a quick and easy pathway to citizenship that end-runs all those foreign applicants currently standing in line, waiting. Most conservatives object strenuously to this, but it is what the DACA recipients, the liberal left and immigrant groups want. Conservatives are also afraid that by giving them citizenship it would open the floodgates to the DACAs’ other relatives like uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. through chain migration. It goes without saying that liberals want the DACAs’ parents to get a free pass to live and work here through a pathway to a green card. In other words, there would be no punishment for breaking our laws, only a reward.

There is a wild card in this argument about allowing parents to stay. While it is a misdemeanor to cross our border illegally, falsifying federal documents — like obtaining Social Security cards with phony numbers — is a felony. Commit a felony, and you are subject to deportation back to your country of origin with a slim if not zero likelihood of getting in again. You can see the problem here, can’t you? By giving a group of felons blanket amnesty and one of the most sought-after documents around — a U.S. green card — you are creating an open door that the rest of the illegal immigrant population could conceivably walk through with enough money and the right lawyer.

For many in Congress, this last aspect is a dealbreaker. I am confident, however, that a quick-fix law only covering the DACAs will be found, but there will be some, especially on the right, who will demand that the DACAs’ parents be deported. The more compassionate among them might vote for a leaveand-come-back solution whereby the parents might get a residency permit from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service with the understanding that if they leave the United States and head on down to the U.S. Embassy in their home country and make an official application for a green card, they would be allowed to come back to the United States and live while the application is being processed. Obviously, this doesn’t include those who falsified federal records; they would have to be deported or jailed.

Something must be done by March. Let’s hope that the political will finds a way.