Thread: In limbo: Courts jostle over DACA, casting a cloudy future for Charlotte ‘Dreamers’

In limbo: Courts jostle over DACA, casting a cloudy future for Charlotte ‘Dreamers’






Alex Slitz/alslitz@charlotteobserver.com



DJ Simmons
Wed, October 26, 2022 at 6:30 AM



With federal courts jostling over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, its future hangs in limbo — affecting thousands of recipients in Charlotte and across North Carolina.

Recent activity pulled the Obama administration policy back in the headlines — judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled against DACA earlier in October, said it needed more review. That decision sent it back to a lower court judge, who now ruled the program can remain temporarily, with limitations, as he reviews Biden administration revisions made in August.

For Marisela Ceniceros, a Charlotte mother of two DACA recipients, a new worry is now front and center — how a potential reversal could affect families like hers.
“It’s very difficult for me to put into words how hard this would be on families,” says Ceniceros, a mother of two DACA recipients.

Ceniceros was ecstatic for the opportunity to have her children, now adults, apply for protection from deportation as undocumented immigrants. At the time, it had been a decade since arriving with them in Charlotte from her native Mexico. Her son was barely months old; her daughter was six.

She brought her children to America for a brighter future — an opportunity for them to get a great education and establish careers, she said.

“I was happy to learn my kids could be a part of something like that,” Ceniceros said, adding the program has since allowed her kids to get work permits and each a drivers’ license. “Everything that I prayed for could happen here.”

First launched in 2012, DACA allows young immigrants living in the country undocumented who were brought here as children to remain in the U.S.

Sometimes, they are referred to as “Dreamers,” based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, was federal legislation offering many of the same protections as DACA.

With 600,000 people nationally currently enrolled in DACA, some 24,000 are recipients living in North Carolina, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The same data also says there are roughly 5,600 who reside in the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC regional statistical area.

If the policy were overturned, it wouldn’t just affect the undocumented, Rusty Price, founder and president of the Camino Community Center, said. These recipients are fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, best-friends and coworkers of U.S. citizens, he said. Community life for everyone, not just DACA recipients would be disrupted.

He added, a misconception on immigration views the Latino community in two groups: documented and undocumented.

“What we fail to remember is that they can live in the same house,” Price said.
Ceniceros’ family is an example of this type of household . The older two — aged 27 and 22, and now working adults — are the DACA recipients. Her youngest is an American citizen.

“These are kids that have been here and in these careers for a long time,” Ceniceros said. “Having this end so abruptly would change their lives.”

Uncertain future

On Oct. 14, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen — the same judge who last year declared DACA illegal — took the appellate court’s advice on a review, but with program limitations he previously called for, the Associated Press reported.

They include no new DACA applicants, but allows for those currently in the program to continue to renew their applications. The current revisions are set to go in effect Monday, AP also reported.

Hanen made his declaration after Texas and eight other states filed a lawsuit against the policy.

“Right now because it’s on hold there’s no way to determine if or when DACA will end,” Ruth Santana, an immigration attorney with The Charlotte Center of Legal Advocacy, said. “That uncertainty for immigrants is very unsettling to say the least.”

That uncertainty adds fuel to another reality — dreamers’ complicated feelings regarding their DACA status. Cecineros said her son was excited to apply for DACA, knowing it could allow him to finally have a driver’s license. But her daughter felt embarrassed to reveal her status as a DACA recipient as a youth, she said.

Both Cecineros’ adult children declined to be interviewed for this story, she told the Charlotte Observer.

“You still don’t get all the benefits of the people born here,” Cecineros said. “You still can’t apply for certain things.”

Recipients must admit they came in undocumented, Santana added, which causes many, who have grown up in the United States, to struggle with stereotypes along with a larger population with similar status.

“It’s something I don’t think they can shake off,” Santana said.

But being in America, Cecineros and her family built relationships through the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system. Her daughter made friends and invited them over, she said. Cecineros said the family, including her husband and a third child, connected with other Charlotte-based immigrant families .

The family fostered ties with the Camino Center, a bilingual and multicultural health center provides affordable care for the under-insured and uninsured in Charlotte. The family even joined its church.

But overturning DACA could break up communities like these, according to Price. Families and friends could be separated, and children could be sent to countries they aren’t familiar with, he added.

“It would be like sending people to exile in a place they didn’t know,” Price said.
For many DACA recipients the only home they know is America, he said. This is where they grew up, went to school, and built life-long friendships, he added.

Deporting recipients also could remove thousands of workers at a time when several industries are experiencing workforce shortages, Price said. It also could remove an income from a home during a time when inflation are hitting families hard, he said.

FWD.us, a nonprofit group focused on immigration, estimated 22,000 jobs could be lost each month for two years if the policy is overturned.

“What’s going to happen when you take out thousands of bilingual workers from the workforce?” Price said. “Well, it’s going to be a huge negative impact.”

What can be done

Price said he’s disappointed that there has not been substantial immigration reform in the past two decades. While waiting for federal courts to make a decision, it’s his “hope and prayer,” that maybe Congress will pass an updated law.

Katie O’Connor, a spokeswoman with the advocacy center, said the center is advising the community to write their senators and Congress members and ask them to establish a legal pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. The center also is encouraging current recipients to still renew their applications.

“This decision needs to move out of the courts and into permanent protections through legislation,” she said.

Right now there is no path to citizenship for recipients, Santana said.

Some recipients are the wage earners in their families, she said. Many are also in the midst of college or advancing in their careers. Without action from Congress, the future of DACA is left to the courts. And this leaves recipients and their loved ones with little stability.

“It’s very scary for these recipients,” Santana said.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/limbo-cou...103000910.html

This is what happens when criminal trespassers break our laws. This mother created this misery for her offspring. Her children can blame her criminal acts of coming here illegally.

Just because your mother robs a bank and gets caught, the children do not get to keep the money.

Deport the whole family together and they can take their "dreams" with them and contribute to their country.

They are not Dreamers, this is absurd. They are cheats and line jumpers, they are liars, they take from us and cost us a fortune.

Do not reward, deport them all.

Go home, apply to come legally like two billion people on the planet, get vetted, wait your turn and pay your own way.

End birthright citizenship for these criminals who come here for the express purpose of giving birth and living off our backs.

We need permanent protections for the American taxpayers who foot the bill for these foreign citizens who have no right to be here.

And their countries laws state if they give birth on foreign soil, that child IS the citizenship of the mother's country. So that does not hold water. Take your offspring with you.