REUTERS
By Saundra Amrehein
October 24, 2012
Carlos Roa celebrated this
summer when the Obama administration announced a new program
to defer deportation for young undocumented immigrants.
But two months into the
program, the 25-year-old activist has yet to apply.
Roa, whose parents brought
him here from Venezuela when he was two, is facing many of
the same worries and complications as thousands of the other
young immigrants, who call themselves "Dreamers" after the
failed Dream Act legislation of 2010 that sought to put them
on a path to citizenship.
Stepping out of the shadows
may identify other family members as undocumented and put
them at risk of deportation.
And after living for years
under the radar, sometimes working off the books, immigrants
can find it difficult to assemble all the documentation
needed to prove their "continued presence" in the U.S. for
at least five years, as the law requires.
Further, some eligible
young people have decided to wait until after the November 6
election to file papers, worried that if Republican
candidate Mitt Romney becomes president he might cancel or
modify the executive order, leaving them vulnerable to
prosecution.
OFF TO A SLOW START
Since August 15, when the
federal government began accepting applications, through
October 10, almost 180,000 people submitted requests. So far
4,591 have been approved, according to the U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services, or USCIS.
The number of applicants is
a fraction of the 1.7 million potentially eligible for the
program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or
DACA, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan
research organization.
"That didn't
surprise me at all," said Laura Lichter, president of
the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), who
practices law in Denver.
"I look at my
own cases, and it took me two weeks to pull in documents
for the simple ones."
While some applicants have
expired visas to prove the date they entered the country,
others were small children when their parents led them
across the border, with no documentation of the event.
School records are crucial
to meeting requirements for DACA, including the requisite
continuous presence in this country.
After high school
graduation, however, many students stop leaving a paper
trail. While thousands have made it to private colleges on
scholarships or money earned through side jobs - allowing
them to use transcripts as proof of their presence - others
who couldn't afford the tuition and lacked documentation for
the less expensive in-state public colleges had to survive
for years working off the books for cash and now lack a
solid record of their whereabouts.
ASSURANCE ABOUT 'LION'S
DEN'
What's more,
Lichter said, clients and their families live in a
climate of fear and uncertainty. Though the immigration
service issued reassurances that applicants' information
won't be turned over to enforcement agents, concerns are
stoked by record-level deportations and an upcoming
presidential election that could affect the future of
the deferral program.
Romney said in early
October that if elected he would honor approved deferrals
but scrap the program in favor of broader reforms. But some
fear that his immigration reform might exclude Dreamers
altogether, noting that he previously opposed the Dream Act.
Unlike that legislation,
deferred action does not confer legal status but instead
offers relief from deportation and a work permit for two
years, after which applicants can seek a renewal. They also
can obtain Social Security numbers.
To qualify, applicants must
pay a $465 fee and show they were under age 31 on June 15;
arrived in the country before age 16; have lived here
continuously for the last five years; and are in school,
have graduated from high school, obtained a GED, or served
in the military.
Suspected national security
threats, felons or those convicted of "serious" misdemeanors
involving drugs or sexual abuse will be turned down.
Despite initial
reservations and difficulties paying the fee, more
undocumented immigrants are coming forward to apply,
said Doug Stump, an Oklahoma immigration lawyer who has
120 applications ready to file.
"The kids just
wanted further assurance that they weren't walking into
the lion's den," Stump said.
SOCIAL MEDIA HELPS
This generation's comfort
with the Internet significantly aids the process. AILA and
other groups set up free online screening programs and are
developing an iPhone application to help Dreamers figure out
if they qualify.
Lawyers like Mayra Calo in
Tampa rely on Twitter and dated photos on Facebook to help
fill in gaps to prove clients' continued presence.
"For most of the girls, if
they are working at home or with their parents, most of them
don't have anything," Calo said, referring to documents
after high school.
Indeed, Facebook and the
Internet helped drive what has become a virtual social
movement of young undocumented immigrants. For the past five
or six years they have used social media tools, including
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and blogs, to tell their
stories and encourage each other to "come out" while also
successfully pressuring officials to halt numerous
deportations.
"They are a force to be
reckoned with now," said Cheryl Little, Miami-based
executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice, which
offers pro bono legal help to undocumented immigrants.
Roa is one of her clients
and one of four students who walked 1,500 miles from Miami
to Washington in 2010 to lobby for deferred action, a
journey they called the Trail of Dreams.
But Little has struggled to
prove Roa's presence between 2007 and 2008.
Though Roa's grandfather
was a U.S. citizen, he died before Roa's father could obtain
a green card.
After high school
graduation in 2005, Roa worked jobs in a warehouse and in
construction, saving up to study architecture at Miami Dade
College in 2009. Those intervening years created a gap in
the documents.
"The one blessing is that I
came out as an undocumented immigrant in 2007," he said.
That year, a New York Times reporter featured Roa in an
article about the Dream Act, though it did not use his last
name.
Little is submitting the
article with his application. If approved, Roa is looking
forward to getting a driver's license and not having to rely
on buses to get around.
That will help him with his
ultimate goal of being accepted at a top-notch university to
finish his architectural studies after he graduates in
December with an associate's degree.
The courage of Dreamers
coming forward in the media inspired Oscar Gutierrez, 18.
For years the high school senior from Clearwater, Florida,
kept his undocumented status a secret - until more than a
week ago, when he got word that his deferred action
application was approved.
"I can get a job now, I can
get a driver's license," Gutierrez said, adding that his
father wrapped him in a big hug the day they got the news.
Since elementary school,
when his parents told him not to tell anyone he was brought
from Mexico as an infant, he had lied about where he was
born, afraid he and his parents would be deported and
separated from his younger sisters, both U.S.-born citizens.
He's glad to step out of
the shadows.
"I don't have to lie that I
wasn't born here ... I don't have limits to what I can do
now."
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