Ensuring Dreamers’ access to education is best plan for America

At a Mexican restaurant on Navigation in late December, the plates had just been cleared when a 43-year-old airplane technician reached out and shook the hand of the bespectacled man seated to his right, former Houston Superintendent and U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. “I want to say, ‘Thank you for changing my life,’” the mechanic, Rosendo Ticas, told Paige. It was something he had wanted to say for more than 15 years. Ticas, who fled wartorn El Salvador as a boy and is now a married father of three with a college degree and two licenses to repair airplanes, credits some of his good fortune to the fact that he and his brother used to cut Paige’s grass.

The superintendent had offered help, if they ever needed it, with college. One day, Ticas’ older brother knocked on Paige’s door and explained that Rosendo had tried enrolling, but because of his immigration status, he would be charged out-of-state tuition costs that he could not afford.

Ticas came to the United States legally, but an unexplained delay in processing his visa renewal left him without legal status for a time.

Paige quickly phoned thenstate Rep. Rick Noriega and the rest is history. Noriega passed HB 1403, known as the Texas Dream Act, and it was signed by then-Gov. Rick Perry in 2001. It extended in-state tuition to students who spent at least three years in a Texas high school and intended to pursue U.S. citizenship. The pioneering law, which passed the Texas House overwhelmingly, has survived conservative attacks in recent years, and has helped thousands of Texas students pursue their own American dream.

In a way, Ticas was the first dreamer. He had become friends with Noriega, but had never had a chance to thank Paige for his role.

“Thank God I ran into the right person to help me,” he said at the lunch a few weeks ago. “I’d still be doing what I was doing before, cutting grass.”

Today, he owns a home and a rental property. And he remarks with some humor that he paid more taxes in the past year than he used to earn in a whole year cutting grass.

Ticas’ story is a reminder of what a motivated young person will do with a little opportunity.

And it is a reminder of what is at stake in the Congressional battle over protections for nearly 800,000 young immigrants known as Dreamers. Many had legal status under an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which President Donald Trump has since rescinded.

Trump has encouraged congressional leaders to come up with a replacement for the program, but negotiations are inching along as Trump insists that any package include border security provisions, including his long-promised wall at the Mexican border.

Ticas empathizes with the dreamers whose lives will be devastated if Congress doesn’t reach a deal. And he also sees the damaging effects on the nation he loves if so many young people are prevented from reaching their potential.

“Those students, they’re not bad people,” he says. “They just want to have the right to have an education.”

Impact on students

Congressional members who slam the door on protections are “closing the door to future doctors and engineers, people this country is going to need in the future,” he said.

More immediately, they’d be slamming the door on workers we need now, including thousands of teachers with DACA status who would be forced to leave the classroom if they lost legal status.

“You don’t just walk out on the street and replace 20,000 teachers, especially during the test periods,” said Paige, who recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to encourage Congressional members and staffers on both sides of the aisle to protect DACA recipients.

Paige, who served as education secretary during the George W. Bush administration, has joined a chorus of education advocates, business leaders and even ex-Homeland Security chiefs urging quick action for Dreamers.

Mike Feinberg, co-founder of KIPP public charter schools and superintendent of KIPP Houston, helped lead the D.C. delegation Paige joined in late November.

Feinberg said Congressional members the group talked to seemed to understand that something had to be done, and they seemed particularly moved by the consequences of inaction on education. Feinberg estimates that about a million students nationwide have teachers who are DACA recipients and could lose their jobs.

“That’s a million families that are getting a letter in the middle of the school year that, by the way, your teacher is no longer employed,” Feinberg said.

He says Americans opposing any protections are in the minority, but they tend to be the loudest, even if their arguments don’t add up. It makes no sense, he said, to punish young people for the actions of their parents.

“If parents go rob a bank, the kid in the car doesn’t get prosecuted,” he said.

And there’s no data to back up the claim that DACA or a similar program would encourage immigration. But Feinberg says there’s plenty of evidence that rescinding protections will harm not just Dreamers but the country, beyond workforce disruptions.

Return on investment

Consider, he says, that taxpayers spend about $100,000 educating all children, including the undocumented, as the Constitution requires, from kindergarten through high school.

“If we’re going to spend that much money for each kid, why wouldn’t you want them to work, to pay taxes and to contribute to society?” Feinberg said.

At the same time, nothing will pass without compromise. And Feinberg believes DACA supporters will have to support provisions geared at tightening border security.

“From a pragmatic argument,” he says, some ask, “‘How do we know we’re not going to have the same problem in 10 years with a new generation of kids?’ That’s a fair point.”

The solution has to show there’s an effort to stem illegal immigration, a priority most everybody shares.

But another priority we share is our children. We make a promise to each one that if they go to school, and do their best, opportunities will follow. Dreams will come true.

“I always knew if you had an education, it opened the door to opportunity,” Ticas said. “If you don’t take the opportunity to better yourself, it seems like you’re just wasting time.”

He’s right. And the same thing can be said for leaders in Washington who foolishly impede the opportunity of hundreds of thousands of young people.

Stop wasting time, Congress. Do your jobs. Do what’s best for the country. And just watch. Like Ticas, they will return the favor.