WOOSTER — White House Chief of Staff John Kelly might say that "Dreamers" won’t be targeted for deportation if their Obama-era protections expire next month.
"I’m not so sure I’d take that to the bank," attorney and immigration policy adviser Angela Maria Kelley told Tuesday night’s audience at the Great Decisions forum at The College of Wooster.
The fact is, said Kelley, that if the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program created by executive order in 2012 is not continued or replaced by something similar, those 800,000 residents will be without legal status and thus will lose their work privileges and will be deportable.
A resolution to the DACA issue remains the sticking point in Congressional budget talks, and with the most recent continuing resolution set to expire on Thursday, no solution is on the horizon.
Kelley is the senior strategic adviser for immigration at the Open Society Foundations and Open Society Policy Center. She previously served as a White House adviser on immigration action in the Obama Administration and also was senior vice president at the Center for American Progress.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the Trump Administration over the President’s handling of DACA, and a federal judge in California has issued a nationwide injunction ordering the Trump Administration to start up the program again, but Kelley said the courts are not the place to win the immigration battle.
"I’m worried about what our long-term prospects look like in the courts," she said, adding that immigration reform must be the job of Congress. Instead, she said, it has become a casualty of a polarized, dysfunctional legislative branch.
"I think, honestly, if members would vote anonymously, (immigration reform) would pass," Kelley said.
If change can’t come from Congress, it will have to come from the people, those who push for change, who contact their legislators and "push for a better America," Kelley said, "because we all deserve that."
Kelley reviewed immigration statistics from over the past few decades, noting that Obama — once referred to as the "deporter-in-chief" — slowed the deportation rate in the later years of his term, instead focusing on who was being deported, how many and from where. Deportations were concentrated more on the border and less on the interior of the country, she said, and there was more focus of deportation of undocumented persons who had committed crimes.
And in 2012 came DACA. But, Kelley said, it doesn’t cover all children who were brought here by undocumented immigrants. In order to qualify, a person has to have lived in the country since June 15, 2007, or before, must have entered the country at younger than 16 years old, must have been younger than 31 as of June 15, 2012, and must pass a background check.
Most of the "Dreamers" came to this country when they were between 3 and 6 years old. Their work authorizations have to be renewed every two years, Kelley said, and the program is not a path to citizenship, just one that prohibits deportation. And having young people register for the program "provided us a chance to look at a group," Kelley said, "and see how they do over time."
So far, the "Dreamers" have done pretty well, she said, with 95 percent working or in school and 63 percent getting better-paying jobs than they had before enrolling in DACA. And without them, the country’s GDP would be predicted to lose $460 billion over the next 10 years.
But immigration reform extends far beyond the future of DACA. Kelley, herself the child of South American immigrants, noted that Congress has tried — and failed — over the years to reach an agreement. In 2013, the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill that "would have put 11 million on a long path to citizenship," she said. And while she didn’t agree with all its provisions, Kelley said, "it was pretty cool to watch (come together), actually," with senators really getting to work, talking with each other, making compromises in order to get to an agreement.
But there was no such work in the U.S. House, which failed to move forward with any legislation, Kelley said except for a few bills related to enforcement actions.
Were it up to her, Kelley said she "would give undocumented persons a chance to come forward, be vetted, pay taxes and be put on path to citizenship." And that would be coupled with reforms to the legal immigration system, she said, "so there are controls in place over who comes in the future."
Reporter Tami Mosser can be reached at tmosser@the-daily-record.com or 330-287-1655.