And so it begins...

Immigrant permits off to an early start

mysanantonio.com
By Jason Buch
Updated 6:37 a.m., Wednesday, August 15, 2012


An unidentified boy walks down stairs with his mother to the lobby of the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio where close to 200 wait to complete necessary identification documents to secure immigration status. Tuesday, August 14, 2012.
Photo: BOB OWEN, San Antonio Express-News / © 2012 San Antonio Express-News

Luis Yanez is used to spending time in the sweltering South Texas heat, but today he begins a process that could free him from the drudgery of painting houses.

For the first time, some immigrants who are in the country illegally will be able to apply to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for a two-year respite from deportation and a permit to legally work in the U.S.

The policy, announced June 15 by President Barack Obama, creates a system for immigrants age 15 to 30 who don't have serious criminal histories to apply for so-called deferred action.

On Tuesday, USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas surprised immigrants by announcing they could begin submitting applications today, 24 hours earlier than they anticipated.

“The permit is going to be a blessing,” said Yanez, 21, who crossed the Rio Grande illegally when he was 12 to join his parents in San Antonio. He now paints houses and attends San Antonio College. “We'll be able to work, to do other things we weren't able to do. (Painting houses) is a good job, but it's horrible to be working outside. You suffer a lot.”

The policy has drawn criticism from Republicans who argue it offers employment to skilled workers — recipients must be high school graduates, GED holders or enrolled in school — during a time of great economic stress.

“With unemployment at 8.3 percent, it's unconscionable that the Obama administration's amnesty program actually requires illegal immigrants to apply for work authorization in the U.S.,” House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, wrote in a statement Tuesday. “This undercuts the 23 million unemployed or underemployed Americans.”

Administration officials counter that the program helps focus their deportation efforts on hardened criminals.

Immigrants with felony convictions, serious misdemeanors or those that involve more than 90 days of jail time or three or more misdemeanors, are not eligible for deferred action.

The U.S. government estimates about 800,000 people will be eligible for deferred action, but other organizations, including the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center, have put the estimate closer to 1 million.

Another 770,000 could be eligible for deferred action when they turn 15, Pew says.

Of those 1.7 million, about 85 percent are Hispanic, according to the center.

On Monday, Yanez stood in line at the Mexican Consulate, sweating with dozens of others waiting to get their passports. On Tuesday, he lugged cans of paint up and down ladders in Terrell Hills.

A 2009 graduate of Fox Tech, Yanez wants to start his own Christian broadcast network. He's involved in Abundant Life Church of God on the South Side. If he gets his work permit, he wants to intern at The Potter's House, the Dallas megachurch led by pastor T.D. Jakes.

But today, his focus is on one thing: filling out his deferred action application and compiling the documents that prove he graduated from high school, has been in the country for the past five years, came here before he turned 15 and was in the country on June 15.

Fleeing a tough life

The lobby of the consulate was packed early Tuesday with nearly 200 people applying for IDs. The consulate usually handles about 200 to 300 applications for passports or consular identification cards every day, said Victor Corzo, head of the legal affairs and consular assistance department.

“There has been an increase related to the deferred action,” Corzo said. “I can say it has increased not only in this consulate, but in the Mexican consular network around the U.S., about 20 percent.”

Edith Ramirez, 16, of Houston said she spent five hours at the consulate waiting to get her passport. But she thinks it was worth the drive to San Antonio.

“There was people even sleeping there,” she said of the Houston consulate.

Yanez said he showed up at the consulate at 7:30 a.m. Monday and left with a passport at about noon.

The aspiring broadcaster grew up in Celaya in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. His father worked in a factory making household appliances, he said, and his mother cleaned houses. By the time he was 11, his father was out of work and his mother had just given birth to his youngest sister.

When the baby died at only 6 months old, his family members decided to leave their tough life in Mexico behind and come to the U.S., Yanez said.

So his parents came to the U.S., leaving Yanez and his surviving sister, two years younger than him, with an uncle. A year later, having settled in San Antonio, they sent for him.

“At first I didn't want to come here,” he said. “You're like, ‘What am I going to do in a different country?'”

The trip to the U.S. was uneventful, Yanez said. A smuggler carried him across the Rio Grande in Laredo and he was able to sneak past a Border Patrol checkpoint. The hard part was when he arrived with his family in San Antonio.

He went to school almost immediately, Yanez said. He didn't know which bus stop to use, and one time the police had to call his parents to pick him up. His parents, who still are undocumented, remain in San Antonio.

“It was hard adapting to life in the United States,” he said. “I didn't speak English, but I applied myself.”

After three years of painting houses, Yanez is preparing for his first shot at legal employment. He has to get together a $465 application fee and proof he meets the requirements for deferred action.

Mayorkas said applicants must mail in a form asking for deferred action and one asking for a work permit, both of which are available on the agency's website, along with documents proving their eligibility. It could take months for USCIS to finish processing the applications and call the young immigrants in for a biometric background check.

Today, Yanez still speaks with an accent. But with trendy wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed goatee, he fits in better at a South Side Starbucks than painting a house in Terrell Hills.

He's happy to be here, he says. If he were in Mexico, his parents probably would have pulled him out of school while he was still a teenager and set him to work full time.

“If I was in Mexico, I would be working now,” he said. “It's a privilege to be here and have an education.”

jbuch@express-news.net

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