The UNM Dream Team recently held a forum at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Church to inform the immigrant community about the Supreme Court's recent decision to bar the expansion of a pro-immigrant program.
The result was a split decision specifically affecting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs, which would have temporarily protected parents and youth from deportation, while giving them the opportunity to apply for work permits, according to Dream Team Organizing Coordinator Estefany Gonzalez.
Gonzalez said the programs could have potentially benefited up to five million people.
“It’s incredibly frustrating. Not only is it a loss for the people involved, but it’s a loss for the community,” said Eva Eitzen, legal director at New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.
Isaac De Luna, communication organizer for El Centro De Igualdad, said although the implementation of DACA in 2012 has been shown to lead to economic growth nationwide, Texas claimed that program reforms would revert that progress in their state.
Richard Santos, a UNM economics professor, said it's evident that immigration has a positive impact on the economy and that it’s a vital contributor to U.S. industry, specifically when many immigrants move to dilapidated areas to open up businesses, leading to growing communities.
Nearly 25 percent of doctors in the United States are foreign born, Santos said, and the restaurant and hotel industry suffers as a result of deportation.
The future of agriculture relies on immigrant labor, he said, and many jobs won’t be filled by US workers. In addition, there are political and social factors of immigration that are even more difficult to address.
Gabriel Sanchez, an associate professor of political science at the University and co-author of "Hispanics and the U.S. Political System," said the perception that immigration is a drain on the economy isn’t fact-driven.
“Historically, when the economy is in decline, the US has used immigrants as scapegoats,” he said. “Currently, the scapegoats just happen to be Latinos.”
From 2009 to 2013, Immigration reform has broken records in terms of how many laws have been passed by American states, Sanchez said. At the same time, some states have introduced strict anti-immigrant bills similar to Arizona’s SB 1070 that requires police to stop people on reasonable suspicion of being an illegal immigrant.
While federal level border policy focuses on trying to identify convicted felons, Sanchez said data has indicated that the overwhelming majority of those who have been deported are not criminals.
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While Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempts to re-unite children of deported parents with family members who are U.S. citizens, many children with deported parents end up in foster care.
Josue De Luna, a field organizer for Dream Team, said he immigrated with his family to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 10 years old.
Luna said just seeing the blue and red lights of police cars pass his home would worry his parents to the point that they would close all the curtains in their home, turn off all lights and tell him to hide in his closet.
“I think everyone in immigrant families has a relative or friend that made a minor mistake or was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was arrested and deported,” De Luna said.
In some instances, Eitzen said police take it upon themselves to notify Immigration and Custom Enforcement of a client’s illegal status after they were involved in a car accident.
It’s not the job of law enforcement to ask about immigration status, she said.
At the Dream Team-led forum, updates on immigration reform came with the advice not to trust notaries or lawyers who claim that programs like DACA and DAPA are effective.
Luna said there were cases where scammers offered assistance to DACA 2012 applicants claiming they were lawyers but weren’t actually credited. As a result, some applicants found themselves in legal trouble.
The UNM Dream Team provided questionnaires to screen for what type of administrative relief people are qualified for, along with a rights card to give to law enforcement.
“Immigrants have the same constitutional rights as citizens,” Eitzen said. “We encourage people not to volunteer information about their immigration status and not to sign anything they can’t understand as ICE officials sometimes encourage immigrants to sign voluntary return forms.”
The Dream Team also assured community members that while DACA expanded and DAPA were blocked, DACA 2012 is still available.
Gonzalez said more than 1,000 people in Bernalillo County who qualify for DACA 2012, have not applied. Many fear that if they do, U.S. Immigrations Services (USCIS) will share their information with ICE.
USCIS has since announced that they do not share their information database with ICE, she said, while some people don’t apply for DACA 2012 because they cannot afford an attorney's fees along with the $465 cost of the application.
Luna said DACA 2012 was the result of years of organizing and pressuring the Obama administration for relief after Obama deported so many immigrants that he gained the nick name “Deporter in Chief” among the Latino community. When it comes to the upcoming election, Luna said one of the main things that has to be considered is that DACA 2012 can be taken away.
Sanchez said while Democratic president nominee Hillary Clinton has stated she will do all that she can to continue with pro-immigration reform, Republican candidate Donald Trump has stated the opposite.
“Given the large number of undocumented people in our country, we need to think about ways of bringing them out of the shadows so they can make the contributions they’re capable of making,” Eitzen said.
