WASHINGTON – House Republicans’ efforts to repeal a law that allows young undocumented immigrants are scaring qualified young Hispanics in the Frederick area from stepping forward to obtain legal status, an immigration advocate said Wednesday.
Two years after President Barack Obama allowed undocumented young people to remain in the U.S. legally, immigrant communities still worry about the future of the Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals program, which grants renewable two-year legal status to undocumented immigrants under age 31 who arrived in America before they were 16.
Ray Garza, chairman of the Frederick Immigration Coalition, said in a telephone interview that some who are qualified but have not yet applied for the program are concerned about being exposed to deportation if the House Republicans’ efforts to repeal DACA succeed. The House passed a bill providing $659 million for emergency spending on the migrant children crises, but added a provision that would repeal DACA. The bill will be before the Senate in September.
“Regardless of (whether) the repeal DACA effort is serious or just making political points for the coming election, it scares people,” Garza said. “It scares the people that are already in the DACA program, and definitely the ones who are thinking of applying.”
Mark Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center, said during a Wednesday panel discussion that Hispanics worry more about deportation than Asian-Americans, the other large bloc of immigrants: 59 percent of foreign-born Hispanics worry that they or family members may be deported compared with 18 percent of foreign-born Asian Americans.
Frederick County now has over four times as many as Hispanics as it did in 2000. There is at least one Hispanic or Latino person among every 13 Frederick County residents, according to 2013 census data.
“For the Hispanic community, (they are) living in the fear of the father of a family getting picked up and deported, leaving the family behind with nobody to support,” Garza said. “It weighs really heavily on their minds while they are driving or just walking on the street.”
Attorneys at the Frederick Immigration Coalition held workshops to help DACA enrollees with the renewal process because their two-year legal status is about to about to expire for some. Obama’s executive order went into effect Aug 15, 2012.
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