WASHINGTON – Although President Barack Obama in June announced a program to allow young undocumented immigrants to get work permits and avoid deportation, the deferred action plan can result in families being separate, experts say.
Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival after the DREAM Act stalled in Congress. Under deferred action, those undocumented immigrants who would have been eligible for the DREAM Act can apply to stay in the country. It is aimed at illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children by their parents. Those eligible must have been brought to the U.S. before they turned 16 and be under 31 years old.
But Obama’s program does not provide parents of these children the immunity from detainment and deportation.
Mexicans are more likely than other nationalities to be separated from their families, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics. In 2010, Mexicans comprised 83 percent of the detained, 73 percent of those forcibly removed and 77 percent of voluntary departures, the agency said.
“These are not just numbers, these are people with faces,” said Joanna Dreby, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Albany who conducted a study about the lives and struggles of undocumented immigrants. Dreby and several other experts reviewed the family separation issue this week at a forum hosted by the Center for American Progress.
Every day, about 4.3 million DREAM Act-eligible children with noncitizen Mexican parents live in fear of being separated from their family, according to a study by Center for American Progress.
“The parents never leave the house together because they are afraid of getting picked up at the same time,” said Seth Freed Wessler, an investigative reporter with the Applied Research Center, a public policy institute advancing racial issues. “They do not want their child left behind alone.”
When the parents are apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or local law enforcement officers who work jointly with the agency, the families must choose between all going to Mexico or being separate as the children remain and parents being deported.
A recent report by the Applied Research Council estimated that at least 5,100 children are in the U.S. foster care system due to a parent’s detention or deportation, and 15,000 more could face similar circumstances in the next five years.
“The current immigration policies are narrow and simple” because they do not consider the mental and emotional effects that these separations can have on the families, said Miriam Yeung, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum who is trying to link women’s rights with immigrant rights.