In light of U.S. President Barack Obama’s immigration policy woes, Boston University’s School of Law held a panel on Feb. 19 to explore the history of immigration policy in the United States.
On Feb. 17, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas placed an injunction on an executive action that could potentially have given amnesty to millions of undocumented people currently living in the United States, halting it from going into effect — the result of a lawsuit filed by 26 states that claim that this program is going to harm them financially.
“It’s definitely a blow to the immigration community because it calls into question the legitimacy of the program,” said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a fellow in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at BU Law. “It creates an air of uncertainty around the program. That’s a problem because we don’t want people to be afraid to apply. We don’t want young people to think this isn’t real or this might go away. We want people to apply because this is a good way for people with no other options to get legal status.”
Organized by the Immigration Law and Policy Society at BU, the panel, largely attended by club members and law students, was intended to inform students of issues related to immigration law. Sherman-Stokes appeared on the panel, with Shannon Erwin, state policy director at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, and Laila Hlass, a BU Law associate professor and also a fellow in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. They spoke about a range of topics, ranging from Obama’s actions to the future of the lawsuit.
“Every president since 1956 has done something about immigration,” Erwin said during the panel. “Ever since 9/11, the United States has had a very Homeland Security-focused immigration policy.”
Obama’s action would implement two programs: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents. DACA is actually an expansion on a 2012 program of the same name. This updated DACA would give expanded protection to more children by lifting some of the restrictions from the original program.
The latter program, DAPA, offers protection for the undocumented parents of legal United States citizens. For both DACA and DAPA, there are certain offenses that can prevent people from receiving protection, such as burglary charges or a driving-under-the-influence charge, and the non-deportation agreement can be revoked at any time.
These programs can lead to mixed-status families, where some are here legally and some are not, Sherman-Stokes said, speaking of a 15-year-old boy whose family members range from being undocumented to having a green card.
“It just creates problems,” she said. “You have a family that can’t move on with its life. At any point, certain of those family members could be deported and totally disrupt that family. And even if they’re not, the threat of deportation hangs over certain members of the family in a way that creates a lot of fear and uncertainty.”
Despite the potential problems some see with the actions, others still see it as a temporary fix.
“It’s just trying to fill in the gap to really do something, to help those people come out of the shadows,” said Violeta Haralampieva, president of the ILPS and a second-year BU Law student. “I just feel that it’s necessary, but it’s very, very far from sufficient, and we really need Congress to come up with a long-term solution.”
An immigrant herself, Haralampieva was born in Bulgaria and then moved to the Czech Republic. After her father received a green card, Haralampieva finished her last year of high school in the United States, attended University of Massachusetts Boston as an undergrad and is now studying law at BU.
“It’s really a gift that I feel that was very important for my life, to get that opportunity,” she said.
However, there are millions of people who haven’t had the experiences Haralampieva had. There are approximately 11.3 million undocumented people currently in the United States as of March 2013, according to a report released in September by Pew Research Center.
“It’s incredibly backed up,” Hlass said during the panel. “People are seeing waits of more than three years. The system is buckling under its knees.”
While the system tries to deal with the millions of deportable people in the United States, she said, they face difficulties.
“It’s important that the kids should be with their families and the parents should stay with their kids,” said Carly Halili, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I’m pretty sure they’re not doing any illegal activities, so I don’t think it really hurts for them to become citizens.”
Halili’s father emigrated from the Philippines when he was eight after his father got a new job at a bank in San Francisco.
“There were six of them [in his family], so it probably was not easy, but since his dad got a job here, it probably wasn’t as hard as other people,” Halili said.
The future of immigration policy is a tricky one due to the huge amounts of people who are potentially deportable, but lack of resources the government has for them. When the 26 states filed the lawsuit, Sherman-Stokes said, they intentionally filed it with Hanen’s court.
“They specifically targeted this judge in Texas because they knew he would be amenable to this kind of a case,” she said. “He has historically written some decisions that were pretty anti-immigrant.”
That leaves the Obama administration to appeal directly to the Fifth Circuit — the most conservative circuit in the country — and ultimately go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the injunction is lifted, the measure will protect around 4.4 of the 11.3 million. While it may be a step forward, it could also leave behind many who have built their homes in the United States, such as Halili’s family.
“My dad doesn’t have an accent. We don’t really talk about culture that much, other than food and religion,” Halili said. “I mean, my friends, a lot of them are also children of immigrants, and I would say compared to them, my family’s pretty American.”