They are arriving on January 20th and that is what they have promised to do.
^^^ All those arriving on Jan 20 will be doing is upholding the law, which is hard to argue against.
DACA is the law right now.
DACA is an executive action for the time being. Harboring an illegal alien is a felony under federal law.
Right, but that just makes it easier for the new administration to overturn it immediately upon taking office… Under DACA right now if they have paid the fee they cannot be deported.
If they entered as children.
Yes, you had to be born after June of 1981 and entered the U.S. before your 16th birthday to qualify under DACA.
On many campuses this “sanctuary” effort is only aimed at protecting their own students and employees.
Forgive an ignorant question but are these college students somewhere in the process for applying for citizenship or are some of them just in the country but have never started the process of citizenship as adults. Even if Obama’s executive order is withdrawn it would seem that if an adult is somewhere in the process for citizenship there should be nothing to fear…or at least that feels reasonable.
^You can’t just “start the process of citizenship.” That’s why many people want what is called “comprehensive immigration reform.” These young people are in limbo, with no way to take proactive steps to achieve citizenship.
In 2007, France elected a president who promised mass deportation for undocumented aliens, especially criminals.
In fact, because they had to produce numbers , most police efforts turned from catching undocumented criminals (especially gun runners and drug dealers) to catching undocumented families through their kids. (I talked with a high level official who explained that resources are limited and catching undocumented criminals is longer and harder, so due to the administration 's pressure they simply couldn’t devote the money and hours to drug dealers anymore. And also, " if you catch a drug dealer, you get one - if you catch a family, you get three, four, five all at once." Good for the numbers based policy. ) The police even stormed a kindergarten to ‘catch’ an undocumented 5 year old. This caused such outrage that seizing kids in school became illegal and they had to wait outside the school gates. Next, they caught a kindergartener and his grandpa who’d come to pick him up, and held them till the entire family turned themselves in. There was scandal there too because the grandpa was beat up in front of the school gates and thus other parents who were shocked their government would authorize such a thing. There were thousands and thousands of situations like that. Not a week went by without such a thing happening. (Many people were 100% fine with it, too, BTW. So don’t say something like “it could never happen here, people would be up in arms”, etc. Yup, some people were up in arms but many just got used to it as a the new normal.)
Finally, the outcry led to a law that protects undocumented children until they’re 18. The minute they turn 18, they can be seized and deported - which is what happened, because waiting for a high school student at the high school door is much easier than catching criminals. Another alternative was to catch the kid’s mother and wait till he turns himself/herself in. There were wrenching choices for parents: do you leave your kids with your adopted country’s protective services or so you take them with you to a country they’ve never lived in, may not speak the language of, which may be dangerous for them?
France elected a new president in 2012 and those practices stopped.
We’re not talking of a long-ago situation. We’re not talking of a Third World authoritarian country. We’re talking about France, a close ally and fellow democracy, 6 years ago. It could happen here too.
We have to prepare for that: what will you do if your kid’s lab partner 'disappears’into a detention camp on the day he turns 18? If the police shows up to seize your 2nd grader’s classmate? If you see a parent or grandparent getting beat up in front of the school? If a kid’s family don’t come to pick him/her up at school and you learn they never will because they were caught and they’re in a deportation center?
Those are real questions many French parents had to ponder. Now, those are real questions for us too.
There too ‘sanctuary schools’ got organized - schools that didn’t volunteer information about kids registered there, refusing to fill out the new line in a database for the kids’citizenship status and country, parents occupying schools, hiding kids, etc. Cities and officials organized ‘secular godparents’ceremonies’ whereby a ‘godparent’ family ‘adopted’ a kid and promised to host him or her if his/her family was deported, to fight for him or her if s/he was seized, etc. Many mayors and elected officials became ‘godparents’.
I don’t know how prevalent all of the civil disobedience was but I know there was enough push back the government had to alter the law twice (first about seizing kids in school, second about waiting till age 18).
There is or was also a common sense law that, if you’ve been continuously enrolled in a French school for 5 or more years by age 13, you can ask for French citizenship. No question about the way you entered the country or how come you don’t already have citizenship. At 13 you become a French citizen, have a little ceremony. This holds or held true till age 18, so you could apply at age 15 for instance. That would be common sense immigration reform in my opinion. Right now, it’s impossible for a kid who grew up an American and discovers s/he is not a citizen upon taking the drivers exam, to try and become that which s/he always thought s/he was. And so there’s an entire class if people who live in limbo.
Ok so the green card process doesn’t work for adults who grew up in the US with non-legal parents? Is that what you mean donnaleighg? Perhaps a category needs to be added to the process for 18 year Olds and up enrolled in US colleges and universities to apply for a green card if they can’t now. Then I can see equivalency between colleges not admitting undocumented students and the current laws around employing undocumented employees. It does feel wrong to me if there is not a process in place for young kids brought into this country illegally to become citizens. But it also feels wrong to me for our country’s higher education system to look the other way. I think of DACA is going to be overturned there should also be a solution in place for 18 year Olds in this country who desire to stay and are not criminals…whether that is college, the military or the workforce.
DACA does not contain any provision that gives these students a pathway to citizenship – it was a temporary measure put in place by Obama while he battled the issue out with Congress. It simply gives a certain segment of the illegal population working papers and protection from deportation. Their DACA status has to be renewed every 2 years. Because of the age group it aims to protect, many of these people are now college students.
My issue is that our government has for a very long time declined to deal with the status of many immigrants currently in our country. These people have been allowed to stay and make lives for themselves here. Many of their children have never known any other country. Do we now say “oops sorry but you have to go now”? Where do they go to? I think those issues require some thought.
The incoming administration is on record as saying that they will focus on people who have criminal records. I would think that might not affect a lot (most?) of these students.
@momofthreeboys Many people would like to see a pathway to citizenship for these young people. However many others call it “amnesty” which has become fighting words. Thus the limbo persists.
^ecept focusing on criminals and protecting DACA kids was Obama’s policy and the explicit promise was to break from that; repealing DACA is the easiest thing to do. As the example of France shows, it’s much easier, faster, and less costly to go after students and families as long as you don’t care about moral implications, but raher just care about numbers and “getting things done one way or another” in order to communicate. DACA kids had to register - and many are in college (others are working or in the military). So colleges and administrations must make the decision now to keep their records to be used against them or hope such a thing doesn’t happen.
A promise has been made of deporting about 2-3 million people. Right now, experts estimate that if you include people who shoplifted and people ran a stop sign or red light, you can reach about 800,000. Where will the rest come from?
The precedents show that they will come from regular people, often kids, because they’re easy to catch.
That’s why schools are on the frontlines.
If a college has a list of undocumented students, it’s very easy to sweep in and arrest all of them at once. Colleges have to decide right now if they will keep such lists, if they will provide information about undocumented students without a warrant, what if there’s a warrant, what will faculty and students do if an arrest takes place in class, on the sidewalk, anywhere on-campus, in their presence off campus.
Any student with DACA status had to apply for it through the government. They have their own list they do not have to depend on the colleges to give it to them.
Edited to add: kind of ironic that by applying for DACA they now need to worry about that information being used against them. Wondering if there are legal issues with that sort of thing.
With perhaps the exception of traveling to our local neighbors (Mexico and Canada), how can study abroad students leave the US in the first place without a passport? DACA or no DACA?
I haven’t read this thoroughly but there is a process under DACA that allows them to travel. Here is Berkeley’s explanation to their students:
http://undocu.berkeley.edu/faq/travelling-with-advance-parole-daca/
The DACA residents who are permitted to travel do so using their passport from their country of origin.
The UC Berkeley link says that advance parole (aka advance permission) to travel overseas for educational purposes is NOT being granted. The link discusses travel for humanitarian reason (for visiting dying relatives, for example), or travel required for work.
Yes, they are not granting permission for study abroad “at this time.” There is a national directive to that effect. I cannot help but wonder if it was put in place recently due to the issues that would be created if DACA is discarded in January.
USCIS will ordinarily grant Advance Parole if travel abroad will be for:
-Educational purposes, such as semester abroad programs or academic research;
-Employment purposes, such as overseas assignments, interviews, conferences, training, or meetings with clients; or
-Humanitarian purposes, such as travel to obtain medical treatment, attend funeral services for a family member, or visit an ailing relative.
DACA protected those who were brought here as children. If they came with a passport, it would have been with a photo of them as a child. For that reason, children’s passports expire in a few years. I can’t imagine a situation in which an illegal subject to DACA still had a valid passport. Unless other countries passport rules are very different. So studying abroad? Unlikely.