President Obama’s announcement that he would halt deportations of undocumented youth and give them work permits, offered a glimpse of hope to undocumented students in Arizona, who are still awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on SB 1070, a bill that essentially criminalizes their most basic human aspirations.
Daniel Rodriguez, an organizer from the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, expressed cautious optimism.
“This is a very concrete step that will offer relief to undocumented youth,” he said, “[but the] devil is in the details.”
Rodriguez, 26, added that, while the announcement brings hope, it also creates a climate that could make people vulnerable to con artists who may try to take advantage of them.
“Our community needs to be ready,” he said. “Don’t let yourself or your family be victims of fraud.”
Obama’s new policy—which bypassed Congressional approval—would benefit undocumented students who can prove they are under 30-years-old, and that they came to the country before the age of 16. They also must have graduated from high school or have a GED.
“It makes no sense to expel talented young people who for all intents and purposes are Americans,” Obama said. “They have been raised as Americans [and they] understand themselves to be part of this country.”
While the change won’t grant citizenship to these young people, many see it as a positive step forward, including Dulce Matuz—a member of the coalition who was recently selected as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” for her activism.
“Now we need to focus on working on our parents, who also need relief,” she said.
Matuz, 27, heard the news while protesting with undocumented youth outside an immigration detention center in Los Angeles, where several undocumented youths were being held for deportation.
She said she hopes the Obama administration will keep its promise this time—in sharp contrast to what she and many others see as the administration’s abandonment of its June 2011 memo recommending the use of prosecutorial discretion to halt deportations of undocumented immigrants with ties to the community and no criminal history.
The memo has served as a guideline, but Matuz and other critics say it has not been implemented adequately and that, in practice, prosecutorial discretion is difficult to oversee or review.
“I hope this [time] is different,” Matuz said.
The announced shift in policy represents the most significant step taken on immigration policy in the U.S. in the past decade.
It is also the first victory for the “DREAMers,” those young activists who have been pushing for passage of the federal DREAM Act—a bill that would provide a path to legalization for qualifying, undocumented youth who are enrolled in college or the military.
Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy and advocacy at the Center for American Progress, believes that the administration’s announcement will precede a real shift in immigration policy.
“There’s no doubt that this administration has turned a page and it’s willing to write the next chapter of the immigration debate,” she said. “At the end of the day, Congress needs to stop hiding behind its desk.”
Kelley participated in a teleconference with journalist José Antonio Vargas, who “came out” as an undocumented immigrant in a nationally discussed article in The New York Times last year.
Vargas’ appearance—with roughly 30 undocumented youth—on the cover of Time magazine preceded the president’s announcement by one day.
“Every year, 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school. I was one of them,” Vargas said. “Now those 65,000 students that graduate from high school are going to start to dream.”
Republican Arizona Governor, Jan Brewer, held a press conference immediately after the president’s announcement, denouncing it as “outrageous” and accusing the president of trying to “grant back-door amnesty” to undocumented students.
“It doesn’t take a cynic to recognize this action for what it is; blatant political pandering,” she said. “Likewise, it’s no coincidence [that] all of this comes on the eve of a long-awaited decision by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding Arizona’s ability to assist with the enforcement of immigration law via SB 1070.”
In 2010, Brewer signed SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law that was the first to make it a state crime to be undocumented.
Since then, similar laws have been enacted in five other states.
When a federal court blocked key parts of Arizona’s law, Brewer appealed the decision, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court is expected to rule on the case in several days.
Obama’s policy change could provide relief from deportation to as many as 1.4 million non-citizens under the age of 30, according to estimates released Friday by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Migration Policy Institute.
The change would not grant permanent legal status or citizenship to young people, but would give them “deferred action”—a way to allow them to continue their military service or begin their careers. The grant of deferred action will be issued on a case-by-case basis and is renewable every two years.
For students like Rodríguez, this is only the beginning. All eyes in the United States—especially Arizona—are now looking to the Supreme Court, which will rule on the four parts of SB 1070 that are currently on hold because of concerns about constitutionality.
Some legal observers expect the justices to reinstate the “Papers, please” portion of the law, which would make it mandatory for police to ask for legal documents during routine stops.
“There’ll be more cases of people being pulled over for racial profiling, so we should prepare for that,” Rodríguez said. “That is why we need this [new policy] and should continue to push the administration for a broader change.”