DACA recipients need to be pulled from legal limbo

Aroche Enriquez, 27, is a graduate of Lampeter-Strasburg High School. He works as a stonemason. He was brought to the United States from his native Guatemala as a teen and has lived here for more than a decade.

He has an infant son with his fiancée, who has a green card. Their American-born baby will turn 1 on Saturday — possibly without his father.

It would be easy for us to say that Aroche Enriquez should return to his home country, Guatemala. But after more than a decade of living in the United States, Guatemala doesn’t really qualify as his home country anymore.

Moreover, he was following the correct steps to renew his DACA authorization. It appears that his application — along with several thousand others — was delayed by a postal service screw-up. He must feel like a character in a Kafka story about bureaucratic insanity.

According to the website Vox, which first reported Aroche Enriquez’s detainment, his application arrived at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service center in Chicago three weeks after he mailed it and five days after the deadline. So it was rejected.

Carrie Carranza, an immigration legal adviser with Church World Service, told Vox they didn’t really understand what had happened. “We told him, ‘We’re so sorry this happened; you did everything right; it was just a fluke, a debacle, out of your control.’ “

A spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service told The New York Times that there had been an “unintentional temporary mail processing delay in the Chicago area.” After that issue was brought to light by the Times and Vox, the USCIS said DACA recipients whose applications were delayed should wait for a letter telling them they could reapply.

Aroche Enriquez was waiting for that letter when he was detained.

Vox said Aroche Enriquez “might be the first known case of an immigrant getting detained by ICE after his DACA expired under the administration’s new rules. He’s almost certainly the first known case of an immigrant getting detained while waiting to reapply for DACA renewal.”

We urge our elected officials in Washington to work on a broader DACA fix.

Most Democrats and Republicans believe that such a fix is necessary. DACA recipients have worked to make something of themselves — that’s actually a requirement of the DACA program.

To retain DACA status, recipients have to be educated or getting an education; more than 75 percent of DACA recipients are employed. Criminality is a disqualifier.

The DACA program never offered a pathway to citizenship. It was a reprieve that allowed young adults to get educated and work — and pay taxes — in the country they call home.

U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, who represents a portion of Lancaster County, joined 33 other Republican U.S. House members in signing a recent letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan calling for legislation “to protect DACA recipients before the holidays.”

Other GOP signatories from Pennsylvania included Reps. Ryan Costello, Charlie Dent and Brian Fitzpatrick.

As the lawmakers wrote, DACA recipients are “contributing members of our communities and our economy. For many, this is the only country they have ever known. They are American in every way but their immigration status.”

They noted that business leaders, university officials and civic leaders alike support a permanent DACA fix. DACA recipients represent an enormous pool of trained and educated talent that the U.S. shouldn’t want to lose.

Former President Barack Obama made a mistake when he launched DACA as an administrative program through executive order, leaving it vulnerable to future executive action.

Congress can remedy this, and should, without delay. We realize that tax reform is taking priority now. But we have faith in the multitasking abilities of our elected officials.

DACA is a program on which most Americans agree. As conservative LNP Editorial Board member Stuart Wesbury noted in a Dec. 6 op-ed, it should be an issue on which compromise is possible.

Aroche Enriquez already fell into a bureaucratic nightmare. More such nightmares await DACA recipients whose statuses are in limbo unless Congress acts — and soon.

— LNP newspaper, The Associated Press