Here's Who President Obama's Executive Order on Immigration Could Help

New York Times

By Tina Griego

November 19, 2014

Here’s who President Obama’s executive order on immigration could help 

There is a way in which after living illegally in a country for many years you come to accept a circumspect life as a normal life. It is normal to stay in the same job for as long as you can keep it no matter the conditions, the pay, the treatment, because it is too risky to find other work without a Social Security card or with a fake number. It is normal to drive only when absolutely necessary because each trip is a roll of the dice — one traffic stop, one wrong answer to a police officer and a carefully constructed life here collapses. A bargain is made in this pretend normalcy: personal freedom in the home country in exchange for economic opportunity in the adopted one. On Thursday, President Obama will reportedly announce an executive order that could grant temporary protections to up to 5 million undocumented immigrants. What the president is offering, then, is a taste of that freedom again. That liberty is incomplete and temporary, but it is of immense value. Just ask the many young recipients of the president’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals authorization. “I am very excited for my mom,” says Lalo Montoya, who last year received permission under DACA to live and work temporarily in the country. His parents, who are undocumented, have lived in the U.S. since 1989. Montoya was 2  when they moved here. His three younger siblings are U.S. citizens. “I see her confident, as a new person not afraid of living everyday life,” he says of his mother. “I can’t wait to see her and my dad experience this and I can’t wait to be there for it and to enjoy it with them.” The president will announce the details of his plan in a prime-time speech Thursday, but it is expected that he will essentially authorize a DACA-like program for millions of undocumented parents of children who are here legally. Montoya’s parents would be prime candidates. So, too, would  Beatriz Perez. Perez is 47, an undocumented mother of four children: two dreamers, two U.S. citizens. She left Sinaloa, Mexico, for Lakeland, Fla., in 1992 with a 2-year-old daughter and a 2-month-old son. Their tourist visa expired. The family stayed. The family grew. “We thought America would give us better opportunities, a better future,” she said. “But every day has moments of anguish.” Perez taught kindergarten in Mexico. Obama’s executive action, she hopes, could help put her back in a classroom. Bilingual teachers are needed in Lakeland, where 12,000 people identify as Hispanic. For now, she works at her son-in-law’s fish nursery, gluing together nets. On Monday, she flew to D.C. with her American-born daughters, 16 and 17, to visit her son, 22-year-old  Jassiel Perez. The mixed-status family protested outside the Senate. They’ll watch Obama’s announcement Thursday at a friend’s house. “It’ll be a huge party,” she said. “The announcement is small, but the victory is big. We’ll enjoy it, and then we’ll keep fighting.”Jassiel Perez, a beneficiary of DACA, doesn’t remember coming to Florida at 2 months old — or the family’s visa expiring when he was 3. Perez didn’t know he was undocumented until he decided to apply to Florida State University. “My counselor said it would be basically impossible,” he said. “So now, I tell people I went to the University of YouTube.” Perez taught himself to build Web sites and, last year, snagged his dream job: Digital organizer at United We Dream in the District, a national support network for immigrant youths. He shares his mother’s feelings about Obama’s soon-to-be-unveiled executive order: It’s a battle won; the war continues. Perez still worries about her and his undocumented older sister, who now has a toddler. He worries about the estimated 16.6 million others like him in “mixed-status” families, a distinction that whispers: We could be separated at any second. Deferred action is a reprieve, not a solution. Perez understands that. Montoya understands that as well. A longtime community organizer who worked on education and immigration issues, he has taken a restaurant job. He says his co-workers at the restaurant are constantly asking him what the president might do. Overwhelmingly, he says, what they want is to be able to get a legal work permit that will allow them to travel back and forth across the border. That’s almost certainly not in the plans. The law is currently such that it punishes those who repeatedly cross the border illegally by barring them from ever becoming legal residents. Montoya’s mother has not seen her parents for 16 years, and when her father fell ill, it was only his admonition that kept her from going to see him. Her parents recently were granted a tourist visa and will be coming to the U.S. next week. “So much is coming together now,” Montoya says. “My mom is hopeful. She’s thinking about her future. It’s like a boost of energy. My father is more positive. They have goals they want to go after.” The president’s action buys time, he says, time in which a nation might see that he and his parents bring more to this country than the value of their labor, that legal status can further an integrated, thriving society. We are part of the community, he says. Let us help you better it.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com