A reader provides “some perspective from a Midwestern family”:
Our college age son is expecting a baby and his 19-year-old girlfriend is undocumented. She has lived in the USA since she was four and is a high school graduate. She’s bright, mature, goal oriented, and resilient – but has had little opportunity to advance economically or attend post secondary school due both to her undocumented legal status and the fear that has prompted her parents to limit their overall assimilation. Being undocumented, neither she nor her parents have ever held jobs providing health insurance or had bank accounts. She’s grown up moving continually as her parents follow work.
Being undocumented, she can not obtain even unsubsidized health insurance through the ACA. Being undocumented she can not obtain a drivers license/state ID or credit. Should she live in our home state of Indiana, she is ineligible for any Medicaid coverage for prenatal or post natal medical care. In California, her home state, where my son now lives, MediCal provides basic prenatal care but only for 30 days at a time – so, our son takes a day off of work (unpaid) every month to escort her to a social service department so she is approved for the next 30 days of prenatal care. She is eligible for WIC but her family can not apply for food stamps.
Both my husband and I have always believed that we live in a big country with room for everyone, and morally we believe this teenager has the right to this nation’s opportunities just as our ancestors did – but it’s been an abstract position until now, and our position was never the norm in our Midwestern suburban community.
Now we’re terrified to think that this lovely girl could be deported pregnant with our son’s child, or that as a parent, she could be consigned to living on the scraps of a menial labor force. The issue is no longer abstract, as I’ve spent the last several weeks researching immigration law and the benefits of President Obama’s 2012 executive orders affecting Dreamers. We’re facilitating and paying for our son’s girlfriend’s DACA application (not an inexpensive or easily documented endeavor), and after the baby arrives, we will retain an immigration attorney to initiate the long and uncertain process for her to perhaps acquire ultimate residency.
My husband I have been slapped by the realization of what being undocumented means to our family. In the last few months, we’ve frequently wondered how many American babies will be born to mothers without access to reasonable prenatal care? How much will state Medicaid programs spend on NICU support for unnecessarily premature infants? How much will school systems spend for special education programs to support children born with preventable learning or developmental disabilities? How many Dreamers grow up in the U.S. without memory of their home countries but are denied access to state tuition at public universities, or just simply can’t be hired for jobs that provide a basically livable wage and dignified entry onto the labor force? How much of a contribution to social security and Medicare would an additional 10 million wage earners provide today? In 20 years as their often large families exponentially hit the payrolls?
I suspect that our family represents the precipice (at least in our corner of the cornfield) of what will eventually impact many Americans who are currently hostile to immigration reform. Because their kids, like our kids, are meeting, marrying, and socializing with a hugely diverse generation of peers. And when things hit home and people open whatever closet door they’ve forced others into, light seeps in.
Another reader:
I am a native-born American. Over the years as a pastor, I’ve worked with any number of immigrants from several different countries. Republican rhetoric is always about securing the border and what to do about the “illegals.” They seem not to realize the immigration system is SO MUCH MORE than border security and people in the US without permission. And our entire immigration system is badly broken. Refugees are immigrants. International students are immigrants. International business persons are immigrants. Foreign-born spouses of US citizens are immigrants. Foreign-born family members of US citizens are immigrants.
A member of my church is married to a French national. They were married in the US. He wants to represent his father’s business in the US. It will take two years and hundreds of dollars in fees for them to be considered for a visa for him. Her parents are working on it from this end and they are so frustrated.
As I understand it, a significant percentage of “illegals” are students and tourists who have overstayed their visa. Could we not establish a readable card issued upon arrival or at a consulate? Set up card readers in post offices, libraries, public buildings. Once a week you have to swipe your card. The reader reports your location to a regional or national monitoring center. It also tells you how many days you have left, or gives instructions about contacting INS/ICE. This is not difficult. But as long as immigration is a way to scare people and raise money for your campaign, we won’t have a solution.
My favorite immigration story is from a friend in Belgium. He met a man in Oregon over a social network website and they fell in love. My Belgian friend visited the US to see his love once a quarter and stayed for a month. On the third trip in a year, the immigration officer at the airport began to question him. It appeared to the officer that my friend was coming to conduct business on a tourist visa. My friend was concerned that if he revealed that it was a male-male relationship, he would not be allowed in. He tried two or three not-quite-false-but-not-full-disclosure explanations. They were not working. Finally he told the officer he had fallen in love with a man in Oregon. All these trips were to see him and make plans for him to move to Belgium where they could get married. He waited. The officer stamped his passport, handed it back, and said “Good luck to you both.”
They are now married and living in Brussels. My Belgian friend simply cannot move his business to the US, even if they wanted to. The immigration hurdles are simply too high.
Another lends his expert input:
I’m an immigration attorney. We’ve all been discussing much of what POTUS may do. Here are my two cents:
(1) Whatever Obama does, it will necessarily be very very limited. In essence, all he can do for the undocumented is formally state that he’ll defer acting to remove a certain class of such individuals. He is free to change his mind, or a future president is free to reverse that order. That’s not much in the way of legal protection, especially since to benefit from this decision, an undocumented immigrant must present themselves to the government. Imagine if the Mayor of New York said “for a period of two years, we’ll not prosecute anyone who engages in casual acts of prostitution, provided this person comes forward and registers with us.”
(2) If the GOP truly is outraged at Obama on the grounds that he is abusing his authority and should be enforcing the law much more, there is an “easy” fix. Just pass a bill which (a) details the enforcement they want and (b) appropriates the money for it. Then Obama has no more discretion. But I’m not holding my breath …
My complicated views on the matter here and here. Blogger input here.
The Dish 