‘ Dreamers’ seeing hope with Biden
Immigrants brought to U. S. as kids want him to offer path to citizenship
When Joe Biden won the presidential election, Vanessa Mejia said she felt hope again.
Hope that she and hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States illegally when they were young can remain in the country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.
President Trump ended
DACA in 2017, setting off a tumultuous and lengthy legal battle that reached the U. S. Supreme Court and left “Dreamers” — as DACA beneficiaries are often called — in limbo for several years. In recent months, the administration has refused to process new applications and has slashed eligibility for DACA, ignoring court orders.
But the program established under an executive action by thenPresident BaPhotos
“As a DACA recipient, having Trump as president, we didn’t know what was going to happen with our future.” Maria Fuentes, paralegal with Central American Resource Center
rack Obama in 2012 will probably gain new life under Biden, who has pledged to reinstate it within his first 100 days in office.
“I feel like I can dream again,” said Mejia, 24, of Oakland, a DACA recipient whose aunt brought her to the U. S. from El Salvador at age 8 to join Mejia’s parents. “I dream that someday I’ll be able to visit my ( first) country again and be called a ( legal U. S.) resident instead of an alien.”
Biden has said that a priority of his presidency will be this program, a key component of U. S. immigration policy that erupted into a tugofwar under Trump. Surveys and studies show that Americans feel DACA recipients deserve to stay in the U. S. because they were brought to the country as children and consider this home. They also contribute significantly to the economy, they say.
A 2018 report by Democrats on the U. S. Small Business Committee predicted a $ 400 billion loss in the gross domestic product over the next decade if the program were to end.
Opponents argue Obama never had the legal authority to implement DACA in the first place, even if it protects people who were raised in this country and contribute economically.
“The issue of whether a president has the authority to simply declare an entire class of law violators exempt from any kind of enforcement is one that needs to be tested in the courts,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D. C., which supports hardline immigration policies. “It should have been tested back in 2012 when President Obama first implemented it.”
There were nearly 644,000 DACA recipients across the U. S. as of March, according to U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program.
DACA benefits immigrants brought to the U. S. illegally before age 16 who have attended school or served in the military and have no serious criminal record. It was intended to offer a reprieve from deportation for these people, many of whom have lived in the U. S. for most of their life. The program allows Dreamers to work legally and obtain a driver’s license. Eligible immigrants had been allowed to renew their status every two years if they lived continuously in the U. S. and committed no significant misdemeanors or worse. DACA provides no pathway to citizenship.
An estimated 74% of Americans said they favor a law that would provide permanent legal status to Dreamers, according to a June poll of more than 9,600 people by Pew Research. Along partisan lines, 91% of Democrats said they support legalization for Dreamers, compared with roughly 54% of Republicans, Pew said.
Trump’s hardline immigration policies — including rescinding DACA and separating parents and children at the border — formed a cornerstone of his presidency. But even the president gave mixed messages on the program, at times appearing sympathetic to Dreamers.
He has expressed “great love” for Dreamers but has said they are “far from angels.”
Biden’s support for the program is clear. But Dreamers say they want more.
“As a DACA recipient, having Trump as president, we didn’t know what was going to happen with our future,” said Maria Fuentes, 24, a paralegal with the Central American Resource Center, or CARECEN, in San Francisco. “My hopes are that Biden actually does something for us permanently and doesn’t just keep extending DACA.”
Biden’s immigration plan includes reinstating DACA within his first 100 days in office, exploring “all legal options to protect their families from inhumane separation,” and giving Dreamers the right to receive federal student aid, including loans and Pell grants.
Laura Sanchez, an attorney and director of CARECEN’s immigration legal program, said Biden’s win is “a big sigh of relief” for Dreamers who have spent the past several years in limbo. But they want permanence under the new administration, she said.
“They want a pathway to citizenship, not just for them but for the 11 million immigrants that are undocumented. That’s the end goal,” she said. “DACA is a BandAid, and it depends on the administration that’s in power. It’s temporary, and it’s not an actual solution.”
The Supreme Court in June ruled that Trump acted illegally when he repealed DACA.
The high court said Trump failed to adequately explain his decision to eliminate the program and that he neglected to consider the impact on more than 700,000 immigrants who relied on DACA, or their 200,000 U. S. citizen children.
The court did not prohibit Trump from making another attempt to eliminate DACA, but ordered it reinstated in the meantime. The administration had stopped accepting new DACA applicants since September 2017 but had been required by lower courts to allow renewals by current participants.
In July, a federal judge in Maryland ordered the administration to restore DACA to its previous status and accept new applications.
But two weeks later, Chad Wolf, Trump’s acting secretary of Homeland Security, said no new applications would be accepted, and current DACA participants could renew for only one year instead of two. He also said immigrants in the program would no longer be allowed to leave the United States and return legally, apart from “exceptional circumstances.”
In a lawsuit filed Nov. 2 against the Trump administration, California, joined by Maine, Maryland and Minnesota, said its antiDACA actions were irrational and inhumane, as well as illegal, because Wolf ignored court orders to reinstate the program and was never lawfully appointed to his position.
On Saturday, a New York judge ruled in a separate lawsuit challenging Wolf’s memorandum, finding Wolf was not lawfully appointed to his position and so making the memorandum invalid. The ruling clears the way for the full reinstatement of DACA, though when that will happen was not immediately unclear.
The ruling also certified a nationwide class for current DACA recipients and individuals eligible to apply, totaling more than 1 million people, according to Karen Tumlin, director and founder of the Justice Action Center and counsel for the case. It does not include recipients who filed their own federal lawsuits.
Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case, said it’s possible Biden will restore DACA “within the first day or two” of his presidency.
“The word is that he will issue an executive order that will restore DACA to what the Supreme Court said this administration should do and didn’t do,” Rosenbaum said. “I think it’s highly likely that DACA will be back in place in the manner it was before the Trump administration rescinded it in the first place.”
The move will be “a unifying measure” that will help boost the economy, he said.
“I think you will see a move to go to Congress to not just restore it but to provide a path for citizenship for these individuals.”