Dilemma in quest for legal status
‘Dreamers’ face debate on funds for wall
When Gerardo Gomez of San Francisco opens Facebook these days, he is often confronted by posts raising the same question — one that is largely theoretical but has generated unusually fierce debate in the community of immigrants known as “Dreamers” to which he belongs.
Would they accept President Trump’s wall at the U.S.-Mexico border if it meant citizenship for the nearly 700,000 people protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program?
“It’s usually, ‘I’m willing to have a wall if I stay,’ or ‘Would you be OK with having a wall if it means citizenship?’ ” said Gomez, who came to the United States from Mexico at age 3 and will see his DACA status expire in August unless Congress emerges from negotiations with a fix.
The debate is a sign of the profound worry gripping DACA recipients, whose protections were established by former President Barack Obama but are being phased out by Trump. It also exposes the raw feelings about the wall, which is seen as a symbol of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda on both the left and right.
While the outlines of the immigration debate remain fuzzy and fluid in Washington, Gomez sometimes feels compelled to step into the social-media fray, to tell others why they’re mistaken in their instinct to entertain a trade-off.
“I’m just as undocumented as the rest of the community,” he responded once on Facebook, referring to all immigrants who lack per-
manent residency, “and I’m unwilling to criminalize them in exchange for my work permit.”
Almost immediately, he recalled, comments began popping up in opposition.
“You’ll be the first one in line to apply” if there’s a compromise, read one posting. Others said, “You’re a bad example” and “You’re trying to ruin this for us,’” recalled Gomez, a 23-year-old fellow at Pangea Legal Services in San Francisco. He’s heard such sentiments in person, too.
For some DACA recipients, he said, the idea of the wall doesn’t seem as toxic. At times he feels like a minority voice for seeing the wall as “a racist symbol.”
Ana Rodriguez, a 26-year old who lives in Union City and works at a day care center, expressed a different perspective. She said thinking about the prospect of a life without a work permit and protection from deportation — which DACA now provides her through October — can be too much.
How would she be able to make a life for herself, she asks, and to have a family?
“If building a wall leads us to having citizenship, then I’m all for it,” Rodriguez said. “The U.S. is what I know and that’s where I want to live my life — I want to be a part of it in full.”
These conversations are sure to deepen, especially after the Trump administration this week proposed to offer citizenship to 1.8 million young immigrants, including those who have DACA, in exchange for $25 billion for a border wall, along with a bevy of policies to restrict legal immigration.
Democratic politicians like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, along with immigrant advocacy groups, have come out hard against the deal, at times focusing on the wall.
“It would be far cheaper to erect a 50-foot concrete statue of a middle finger and point it towards Latin America,” tweeted Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois. “Both a wall and the statue would be equally offensive and equally ineffective and both would express Trump’s deeply held suspicion of Latinos.”
But in a year of uncertainty over their future, some DACA recipients are coming to grips with what they would be willing to stomach it if it meant a path to citizenship.
Marissa Montes, co-director of the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic in Los Angeles, said the uncertainty has worn down the “Dreamers” who walk into her clinic.
“I think it’s a culmination of an entire life experience. These are kids who have tried to do the best they could to prove they are part of this country. This past year has tested them,” she said.
Montes has noticed in recent weeks that recipients have sounded more and more likely to back a wall — and even, at times, cuts to family-based migration that Trump and other conservatives favor — in exchange for citizenship.
“It’s coming from a point of exhaustion — they’ve tried everything,” Montes said. “Their instinct is survival and as human beings, how much longer can they endure this? They’re pingponging back and forth.”
Gomez said, “It comes from fear and anxiety.”
The program, implemented by Obama in 2012, allowed immigrants who came to the country before the age of 16, and who had lived in the country continuously since 2007 with no significant criminal convictions, to receive renewable, two-year protections from deportation along with work permits.
Many enrolled in the program have thrived, and studies have shown that DACA has allowed recipients to earn more money and to help their families financially.
Trump announced in September he was phasing out the program, and without a compromise some DACA recipients will lose protection starting in March.
With time running short, Rodriguez said, “I’m sure a lot of us will say go ahead and build the wall if that’s what’s gonna let us continue living our lives.”
She added, “We just want to live in peace like everyone else.”