Many of California’s illegal immigrants feel they’re in the driver’s seat


Undocumented immigrant Juan Valentin drives in Stockton Tuesday. Valentin was able to get his driver’s license
last year. Photo by Max Whittaker

Posted: 07/05/16, 6:35 PM PDT

STOCKTON >> Juan Valentin learned to drive in the agricultural fields around Stockton. An undocumented immigrant from Tijuana, Mexico, he spent the next 10 years on California roads without a license, seeing little choice.

“Do you work, or do you not work?” said Valentin, now a warehouse worker for a local food producer. “Do you bring food to the table for your kids or not?”


Undocumented immigrant Juan Valentin, center, hangs out with his sisters, Valeria Valentin, left, Rosemarie Valentin, right, his daughter Jacqueline, center right, and son Miguel,
far right, in his Stockton home, Tuesday. Photo by Max Whittaker

Today he’s now one of roughly 700,000 illegal immigrants with a California driver’s license. “My life has gotten so much easier,” he said.

Amid this election year’s highly charged debate over immigration policies and the U.S. Supreme Courts’s recent 4-4 vote that prevented President Barack Obama’s executive order granting deportation relief to several million illegal immigrants from taking effect, California stands out for the many rights state lawmakers have granted to an estimated 3 million undocumented residents. The suite of policies goes far beyond driving privileges, providing work opportunities and protections, access to health care coverage and financial assistance for higher education.

Research suggests those 3 million people give back to the economy. The nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that California’s illegal immigrants contribute more than $3.1 billion annually in state and local taxes.

California’s policies are approaching “de facto state citizenship” for illegal immigrants, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy at UC Riverside.
Undocumented students have the right to in-state tuition at California public universities and community colleges and access to state-funded grants for higher education. Undocumented children can now get full coverage in Medi-Cal, California’s health care program for the poor.

Healthcare providers and other professionals cannot be barred from licenses to practice in California because of their immigration status. Other measures ban law enforcement from detaining people solely because of their immigration status. Employers are prohibited from checking the legal status of existing employees or that of applicants who have not been offered a job.

The federal government has helped California become more accommodating, Ramakrishnan said, especially with Obama’s 2012 executive action to afford young people whose parents brought them here illegally — often referred to as “dreamers” — a temporary stay from deportation.

And immigrants rights groups have helped elect supportive leaders.

“You have many folks who are the children of immigrants who are now holding positions of leadership, trying to drive good policy forward,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Los Angeles, who has carried bills to give new benefits to illegal immigrants, is the son of parents who were once undocumented, Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed one of Lara’s measure. If approved by the federal government, it would allow illegal immigrants to buy health insurance through the state-run marketplace, Covered California, without public subsidies. Brown has signed other similar measures, saying they help bring illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.”

Randy Capps, director of U.S. Programs of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C., said California “is leading the vanguard of states that have been going in a pro-integration direction. ... There are also some states that are moving in the opposite direction right now.”
Keeping illegal immigrants away from U.S. borders and out of taxpayer-funded benefit programs is a central part of the national Republican platform. But among California’s GOP, the tone is softer and the voting record is mixed. When lawmakers from California’s minority party oppose pro-immigrant legislation, their arguments focus on the scarcity of resources.

“We don’t have enough revenue to take care of every citizen in the state of California,” state Sen. Jeff Stone, R-Riverside, said last year, as the Legislature debated the Medi-Cal expansion.

The conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University touts the economic value of immigration. Carson Bruno, a Hoover research fellow, said more people are leaving California than settling here, and he supports measures that enable immigrants to be more productive.

“Whether it’s high-skilled immigrants who are really driving the new entrepreneurial ventures in Silicon Valley, or if it’s the low-skilled immigrants who really are very important to the agricultural and hospitality industry, immigrants … are economic drivers for the state,” Bruno said.

Still, he said, California should be careful not to allow its policies to become a magnet for illegal immigration — and should evaluate the economic and human impact of those policies.

In the coming years, granting more rights and benefits to immigrants — such as voting privileges, serving on juries or running for office — will be a tougher battle, Ramakrishnan predicts. Proposals such as the one to expand Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants come with a high price tag.

“The chances of big changes … are smaller,” Ramakrishnan said.

But the changes California has made so far have already made a difference to Juan Valentin.

In addition to driving to work and getting necessities, he now takes trips with his family to the Sacramento Zoo and Santa Cruz.

California’s laws “have allowed us to … feel more a part of the community.” Valentin said.

His parents’ lives consisted of going to work and staying home. They “didn’t look towards the future,” he said.

Valentin’s 19-year-old sister, Valeria, has temporary legal status because of the Obama’s “dreamers” executive order. She attended college this year, the first of her family to do so, and hopes to become a psychologist.

A college education had felt out of reach to Juan Valentin, but he says his kids now have an aunt to look up to.

Said Valentin: “She’s going to go farther than any of us.”

CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining state policies and politics.

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/art...NEWS/160709873