Medium
(Op-Ed)
By Marshall Fitz
March 1, 2016
The
Republican presidential primary has devolved in to a nativist circus.
The top-3 remaining candidates — Trump, Rubio, and Cruz — have abandoned
all pretense of promoting
realistic (or humane) immigration policy proposals. Instead, they are
each vying for the mantle of hardest anti-immigrant hardliner.
Perhaps
one of the most distressing immigration policy positions they share is
their opposition to the Obama administration’s common sense immigration
executive actions:
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA).
DACA has been in effect since 2012 and has already provided more than
700,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children the
chance to obtain temporary
protection from deportation. All the economic data indicate an
overwhelmingly positive set of outcomes — these young adults are getting
drivers licenses, buying cars, attending and graduating from college,
earning higher wages, and helping support their families.
Nonetheless, all of the top candidates have now vowed to rescind DACA immediately if they become president.
The DAPA program, however, has not yet gone in to effect, stuck in legal
limbo based on a politically motivated lawsuit that is now pending at
the Supreme Court. Several
recently published studies shed new light on the profound implications
of how the Court rules. These studies paint a clear portrait of the
millions of American families that will be impacted by the decision as
well as the high economic and fiscal stakes in
the case. They also make clear why the federal government and its
policies should prevail (not to mention why this primary contest for
“nativist in chief” is deeply counterproductive).
United States Supreme Court
U.S. v Texas — A Quick Refresher
On
November 20, 2014, President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary
Johnson announced a series of administrative steps to bring some
coherence and rationality to immigration
enforcement. Among the measures announced was DAPA, which was designed
to build on the success of DACA. The DAPA program would permit
undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents to
request a temporary reprieve from deportation and employment
authorization if they have lived in the U.S. for at least five years.
To qualify for this discretionary relief, the parent would have to
submit to extensive background checks and demonstrate that they are
neither criminals nor security threats.
The
common sense rationale for this program (and the earlier DACA) was to
enable DHS to prioritize enforcement against serious criminals and
safety threats, while deprioritizing
the separation of families and people with deep roots in the United
States. Thrilled by the prospects of a life without the corrosive fear
of deportation, millions of American families cheered the program’s
announcement. Nativists and cynical politicians,
however, decried the program as administrative amnesty and launched a
series of legislative and legal broadsides at the program.
Republicans
in Congress tried and failed to legislatively block the DAPA program.
But Republican governors shopped for and found a sympathetic federal
district judge in
Texas who enjoined DAPA’s implementation. The Department of Justice
immediately appealed the district judge’s politically charged, legally
flawed ruling to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. In what can only be
described as epically bad luck, two of the randomly
assigned judges on the three-judge panel just happened to be two of the
most conservative federal appellate judges in the country. Despite a
strenuous and cogent dissent by the third judge, the panel endorsed the
transparently political and patently erroneous
district court ruling.
On
January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the federal
government’s appeal of that ruling in the case, now known as U.S. v
Texas. The two parties are currently
briefing the merits of the case and numerous stakeholders are
submitting amicus (friend of the court) briefs to provide the Court with
a variety of different legal and factual perspectives on what’s at
stake. In connection with those briefs, several highly-respected
non-partisan research organizations have analyzed the DAPA eligible
population and their families as well as the fiscal/economic impact of
the program.
DAPA Eligible Immigrants Are Deeply Rooted in America
According
to a recently released report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
and the Urban Institute (Urban), approximately 3.6 million undocumented
parents of U.S.
citizens and legal permanent residents would be eligible for DAPA.
But
the direct impact would extend much further still, since they estimate
that more than 10 million people live in families in which at least one
person would be DAPA eligible. This has significant bearing on the health of our nation’s
youth and future. As the MPI/Urban report authors highlight: “A strong
body of evidence demonstrates that growing up with unauthorized
immigrant parents harms the well-being and development
of children due to increased family stress, fear of deportation, poor
work conditions, reduced income, inferior housing, and reluctance to
access community supports for children. DAPA could alleviate some of
these harms.”
Not
only do these DAPA eligible parents live in American families with
millions of US citizen children, they have also lived in this country
for lengthy periods. By definition,
they must have resided in the United States for at least 5 years to be
eligible for the program, but nearly 70% have lived here for more than
ten years and 25% have lived here for at least 20 years.
A
report from the USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration
determined that in California alone, there are approximately one million DAPA eligible residents. Of
the DAPA eligible Californians, around 75% have resided in the United
States for more than a decade. And, given the well-settled undocumented
population in California, nearly half of the state’s undocumented
population would be eligible for deferred action
under either DAPA or DACA.
These
families have deep roots in communities across America. Enabling them
to live without the constant fear of being torn apart will create more
economic and emotional
stability in the household, lead to better educational outcomes for the
children, and provide opportunities for them to contribute more fully
throughout their communities.
DAPA Would Lift Children Out of Poverty, Grow the Economy, and Increase Tax Revenues
The
lawsuit filed by Texas and joined by other states was premised on the
claim that DAPA would harm the state because DAPA recipients would be
able to apply for driver’s
licenses, which are, in Texas, partly subsidized by the state’s
taxpayers. Setting aside the strong legal arguments against this flimsy
and attenuated basis for the lawsuit (and the Pandora’s box it would
open to politically motivated legal challenges against
every federal administrative policy), the facts show that DAPA would
have significant positive economic and fiscal impacts for the states.
For
starters, the MPI and Urban report show that DAPA families would see an
income gain of approximately 10 percent if the parents obtained work
authorization. DAPA eligible
individuals and their families earn less annually than similarly
situated legal permanent residents because their undocumented status
reduces their job mobility and makes them more exploitable. Work
authorization would enable them to move in to change jobs,
maximize their full range of skills, and obtain additional education
and training that would lead to an increase in their incomes.
These
income gains would lift many of these families above the poverty line.
Equally important, deferring the deportation of these parents will help
protect their families
from significant economic harm. As the MPI/Urban report concludes: “If
the father were deported, the average DAPA family would go from
near-poor (with an income at about 135 percent of the federal poverty
level) to deep poverty (with an income at about 50
percent of that level).” In other words, simply by deferring the
deportation of these parents will protect millions of U.S. citizen
children from descending in to deep poverty.
Contrary
to the specter raised in many extreme right-wing corners that DAPA recipients will take jobs from the native born, these programs would not
impact labor force
participation. As the MPI/Urban study shows, DAPA eligible men are
considerably more likely (95% v. 86%) to be in the labor force than
their legal permanent residents counterparts. They just earn less because
of their marginalization from the formal economy.
Significantly,
the benefits of enhanced workforce mobility and productivity not only
affect DAPA recipients and their families, the positive economic
outcomes actually
ripple throughout the economy. Because these families are also
consumers, they will spend the additional money on food, clothes,
housing, transportation, etc. That means more demand in the economy,
which leads to income growth and job creation for all Americans.
One study from the Center for American Progress pegs the increase in
cumulative GDP over a 10-year period from DACA and DAPA at $230 billion.
That,
of course, is just a fraction of the economic growth that would flow
from a legislative solution that authorized most undocumented immigrants
to earn legal status
and citizenship over five years. According to the Center for American
Progress, such a program would produce a cumulative increase in GDP of
more than $1 trillion. Contrast that with the massive hole in the
economy — estimated by the conservative American
Action Forum to be $1.6 trillion over 10 years — that that would result
from driving 11 million people (not to mention many of their family
members) out of the country. In this fact-free campaign, the mass
deportation nightmare that Trump are Cruz have endorsed
ignores both the costs and feasibility of such a plan. The American
Action Forum estimates that the hard costs of actually identifying,
detaining and deporting the undocumented population to range from
$400–600 billion.
What’s
more, even though undocumented workers are economically marginalized,
they still pay significant amounts of state and local taxes. The
Institute on Taxation and
Economic Policy reports that in 2013, undocumented immigrants paid
$11.6 billion in state and local taxes ($~1.6 billion in California
alone), or an average of 8% of their annual income. By contrast, the
wealthiest Americans (the top 1%) only pay about 5.4%
of their income to state and local taxes.
And
if the administration’s deferred action initiatives were fully
implemented, annual state and local revenues would increase by more than
$805 million. In Texas, the
lead plaintiff in the lawsuit blocking DAPA, the increase in state
revenue from full implementation would be nearly $59 million.
A
strong nation begins with strong families and communities. Congress’s
failure to overhaul the nation’s outdated immigration laws has
destabilized and weakened communities
across the country. With DACA and DAPA, the Obama administration has
taken important steps to strengthen millions of families who are poised
to contribute more robustly to the economic and social fabric of our
nation.
As
a matter of law and policy, the Supreme Court’s decision in this case
should be easy: reject the politically motivated legal challenge and
unfreeze DAPA to strengthen
our country. But as voters, we also have a decision to make — embrace
immigration policies that ensure a gateway to dynamism and economic
vitality, or cling to backward looking policies that stir the cauldron
of anger and fear, while ensuring prolonged economic
stagnation for us all. If we embrace our national heritage and core
values, that too should be an easy choice.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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