US Policy on Immigration Position Paper: DACA
Nobody chooses where they are born and raised. Where a person is born and raised, however, dictates the culture, political and economic climate, and amount of opportunity that shapes and defines that person’s identity. This lack of control over the environment that will shape what a person’s life will amount to be is a reality that many face as the children of undocumented immigrants. When children are brought to the United States by their parents without documentation, they do not have a say nor notion of how their existence could be considered unlawful by the immigration system. As they grow up in the United States, the culture that defines their environment and the reality that living in the United States provides becomes an integral part of their personal identity. They do not know who they are within the context of a country their parents left behind, only what it is to be a part of the society that they have been raised in.
This lack of choice within the undocumented immigration process and deep-rooted identity within US society is what has led politicians to seek alternatives to current immigration policies that create barriers for people who immigrated to the United States when they were children. One of these alternatives is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which was introduced by President Barack Obama in 2012, and has since been a target of the Trump administration. Put simply, DACA gives undocumented immigrants that were brought to the United States as children the temporary right to live, study, and work in the United States without fearing persecution and deportation. This status has to be renewed every two years and it does not introduce a pathway towards obtaining naturalized citizenship. Those eligible are those that were younger than 31 when the policy was enacted on June 15, 2012, and must have arrived to the United States before they were 16 years old. Additionally, they must have been living continuously in the United States since June of 2007.
This group of eligibles has come to be known as Dreamers, who get their name from the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, the 2001 bipartisan effort to create a pathway towards naturalized citizenship for Dreamers by giving them the chance to become permanent legal residents. Eleven years after the Dream Act failed to pass, Obama came up with a transitional solution to aid Dreamers in their quest to build a proactive life in the United States and contribute to its economic and social stability. This way, DACA was created and signed into effect through a presidential executive order with the intention of protecting Dreamers until a more sustainable policy could be put in place by lawmakers in Congress.
Once a person meets the minimum requirements stated earlier to be deemed a Dreamer, the United States government meticulously screens them in order to decide if they are eligible to receive legal status under DACA. This screening checks that they have not committed any crimes and are not a national security threat. Additionally, it ensures that they are currently enrolled in school or the military, or that they already have a diploma or G.E.D. (Waters) Once approved, under DACA Dreamers receive a list of benefits that include: the right to reside in the country legally, work permits (which may lead to access to private healthcare through their employer and the ability to pay for higher education), drive legally, in-state tuition costs and state-funded grants, and, in some places, access to health care subsidized by the government.
Since President Trump assumed power of the executive branch in 2016, nine conservative state attorneys general have pressured the president to get rid of the policy by threatening to sue over the overreach of executive power that they thought this policy represented. President Trump has done everything in his power to do so, but the Supreme Court has stood in his way. If he were to succeed in repealing DACA, the Trump administration would be putting roughly 800,000 people at risk of deportation. Of these 800,000, most come from Mexico and Central America, although some also come from South America, Asia, and the Caribbean. (Dickerson) This is an important policy to discuss and maintain in place, particularly until a more sustainable immigration policy that accounts for undocumented children is put into action, due to the fact that the United States’ international policy has historically contributed to the political, social, and economic instability that most undocumented immigrants are fleeing when they enter the United States. In Latin America, the United States has used the advancement of its own political agenda to justify its intervention in countless countries by backing many political coups that have left impotent leaders in power. Additionally, the United State’s high demand of narcotics has allowed for drug cartels seeking to reap the benefits of controlling its supply to flourish in Latin America. The militarization of the war on drugs that the United States waged against the drug suppliers, rather than focusing on rehabilitating a society with a high demand for narcotics, spread violence throughout countries as the cartels sought to set up operations in varying places that the United States did not have as far of a reach, particularly Guatemala and Honduras. (Ellis) In a less explicit manner, the United States brought violence to Latin America as marginalized groups who were negatively affected by globalization began to demand having their voices heard through nonpeaceful protests. An example of this is the indigenous rebellion that happened in Chiapas, Mexico as the EZLN erupted in violence in the early 1990s in search of more equal rights and representation in the Mexican government as the NAFTA deal was enacted to benefit the United States, Canada, and those in positions of power in Mexico. (Zugman)
This instability that has been fostered for decades in Latin America due to the exploitation of its resources and people by influential countries like the United States has made a lot of the countries that Dreamers had called home before the age of 16 unsafe. This, along with the fact that the immigration system in the United States is very inaccessible to those that do not speak English but wish to seek asylum, provides the United States with a moral responsibility to maintain the legitimacy of DACA and pursue other forms of long-term immigration reform that aids undocumented children who have been brought to the United States in hopes of escaping violence and in pursuit of opportunity. Beyond a moral responsibility, however, the United States should maintain DACA for its own political and economic benefit. By repealing DACA, the United States would be missing out on the economic contributions that DACA participants provide, wasting taxpayer dollars through the deportation of said participants, and undergoing a public health issue.
Among the myths that uphold the arguments in support of repealing DACA, the ones that seem most convincing and brought up among conservative politicians include the fact that DACA has incentivized an increase in undocumented immigration and that DACA has taken jobs from United States citizens. According to David Bier in his article Five myths about DACA, “House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is among those who support ending DACA because it has ‘encouraged more illegal immigration and contributed to the surge of unaccompanied minors and families seeking to enter the U.S. illegally’”. However, because of the strict specifications that describe an eligible person, any recent undocumented immigrant would not qualify for DACA because, as mentioned earlier, they must have been living in the United States continuously since 2007. This means that no one entering the country now would be eligible to apply for DACA, meaning that any increase in undocumented immigration cannot be attributed to the creation of DACA. Furthermore, assuming that undocumented immigrants are taking the jobs of citizens disregards that the economy is constantly evolving to meet the needs of a society that is growing in numbers, regardless of immigration. Economic growth allows for jobs to be created as needed, which is why as the labor force doubled in size from 1970 to 2017, instead of wounding up with an unemployment level close to 50%, the job market adjusted and industries developed to provide a doubling of jobs available as well. So as immigration increases, not only does consumption increase, but so does the job market. (Bier)
One of the main reasons that DACA should not be repealed is the positive economic contribution that Dreamers have. Due to the qualifications required for a person to receive DACA benefits, DACA recipients are educated members of society that can be compared to workers who come to the United States with H-1B visas, or visas for “high-skilled” workers. These workers contribute to US human capital and, therefore, its economic growth in the long term. (Kurtzleben) Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that although immigration has been correlated with some job loss in teenage and elder populations, these are not the jobs that the educated DACA recipients would acquire, meaning that their contribution to the US economy comes at no cost to “average” US citizens. (Stone)
Another reason that DACA should not be repealed is the fact that the deportation of Dreamers would cause a waste of taxpayer dollars. The level of education required to qualify for DACA, because most Dreamers have grown up in the US, has been achieved through the US public education system (which is largely funded by property taxes). This would mean that deporting Dreamers would allow for those taxes that have been invested in educating these children to be sent to benefit another country’s human capital, therefore dramatically reducing the returns to education. Further, this level of education provided by the United States also leads to higher incomes that can be taxed more heavily if Dreamers are allowed to have work permits in the US instead of being deported. This money from these taxes would be lost due to a repeal in DACA. (Stone) In fact, according to research conducted by Brannon and McGee, repealing DACA would lead to a $120 billion loss in income, which would result in a $15 billion loss in tax revenue, without any other offsetting gains, over the next decade. (Brannon)
Lastly, repealing DACA would lead to concerning developments in relation to public health, as Dreamers’ mental and physical health would be put at risk at the same time that their ability to seek treatment would be eliminated. The economic opportunities and the protection from deportation that DACA provides are correlated to large mental health benefits. (Kawachi) Because most systems of oppression affect people in intersectional ways, this correlation between immigration status and mental health could also affect other aspects of Dreamers’ lives, like socioeconomic status and educational attainment. Researchers have found that people that are eligible to receive DACA are almost 40% less likely to experience moderate-to-severe psychological distress than those who are not. (Linton) These adverse effects could be magnified by the fact that most undocumented immigrants would refuse to seek help in fear of deportation, which would lead to mental and physical health issues dangerously untreated. (Tsai)
Although President Trump has spent much of his administration advocating against DACA and other immigration policies, it is clear that they are important not just for the wellbeing of the people that have immigrated to the United States, but also for the country’s economic and social benefit. The United States has a moral obligation to make the immigration process a more accessible and efficient process, but it also has an obligation to itself to keep the economic benefits Dreamers contribute to the economy, prevent the loss of tax dollars due to deportation, and suppress a potential public health crisis. Although there is more to do beyond upholding DACA in order to reach and maintain these goals in the long run, preventing its repeal is a step in the right direction.
*This position paper was originally written for UF course GEA3405: Geography of Latin America (Summer 2020).
References
Bier, David. “Five Myths About DACA.” Washington Post, 2017, www.hrwstf.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Five-myths-about-DACA.pdf.
Brannon, Ike, and M. Kevin McGee. “Estimating the Economic Impacts of DACA.” SSRN, 17 July 2019, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3420511.
Dickerson, Caitlin. “What Is DACA? Who Are the Dreamers? Here Are Some Answers.” The New York Times, 2018, www.pjstef.com/uploads/1/0/4/1/10414324/what-is-daca.pdf.
Kurtzleben, Danielle. FACT CHECK: Are DACA Recipients Stealing Jobs Away From Other Americans? . 2017, learninglab.si.edu/cabinet/file/a06ac74e-7e24-4d20-99e7-c04c57815dad/FactCheckANALYSIS.pdf.
Stone, Chad. “Ending DACA Program for Young Undocumented Immigrants Makes No Economic Sense.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2017, vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/83620/DACAUndocumentedImmigrants.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Uwemedimo, Omolara T., et al. “A Dream Deferred: Ending DACA Threatens Children, Families, and Communities.” American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Pediatrics, 1 Dec. 2017, pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/140/6/e20173089.
Venkataramani, Atheendar & Tsai, Alexander. (2017). Dreams Deferred — The Public Health Consequences of Rescinding DACA. New England Journal of Medicine. 377. 10.1056/NEJMp1711416.
Venkataramani, Atheendar S, et al. “Health Consequences of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Immigration Programme: a Quasi-Experimental Study.” The Lancet Public Health, Elsevier, 15 Mar. 2017, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468266717300476.
Waters, Joanna. “What Is DACA and Who Are the Dreamers?” NEWSELA, lessonbank.kyae.ky.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/DACAarticle.pdf.
Zugman, Kara Ann. “Zapatismo and Urban Political Practice - Kara Ann Zugman, 2005.” SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0094582X05278138?casa_token=EiblmrKTcRMAAAAA%3A8fNy9bXET-4u7GmkojjGDl0Ep30o6OgIFlVJp8l6HvhUwOidpyUq7woDQnGawB2mJGVloqy8PeWt8Q.