Dreamers urge for protections in Senate hearing on immigrant youth

Young immigrants who have been shut out of DACA point to the program's success in an attempt to garner bipartisan support for "a path to U.S. citizenship."

Immigration rights activists rally in front of the Supreme Court in 2019. 

Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images file


May 8, 2024, 
By Nicole Acevedo

NBC

As immigration policies take center stage in the nation’s political debate and the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program remains uncertain, senators are holding a hearing Wednesday on the "urgent need to protect immigrant youth," according to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The occasion has prompted 1,636 scholars and alumni of TheDream.US, an organization helping DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrant youths known as Dreamers go to college, to sign a letter urging Congress to "provide us with the opportunity to pursue a path to U.S. citizenship naturalization."

"Such action will provide certainty to our families and communities and strengthen our nation’s economy by ensuring the future of a vital, vibrant workforce," the letter, first shared with NBC News, reads.

Other organizations such as evangelical and educational groups have also shared letters of support ahead of the hearing.

Gaby Pacheco, an education leader and president of TheDream.US, is one of five witnesses expected to speak at the hearing. She will be advocating for legislation that would give a pathway to legalization to young immigrant adults who've spent most of their lives in the U.S., something that polls have shown has broad support.

"The reality is that more than ever, without bipartisanship, we're not going to be able to get anything done," Pacheco told NBC News in a phone interview ahead of her testimony.

But achieving the much-needed bipartisanship may be more challenging now than ever before, said Pacheco, a former DACA recipient who has advocated for Dreamers her entire life.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, opened the hearing focusing on the contributions of Dreamers and DACA recipients. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the ranking member, responded saying that fixing DACA “is not my concern right now” because his priority is solving the “complete, utter disaster” riddling the border and U.S. immigration policies.

Graham added that legalizing Dreamers sends others the message “to keep coming” and will worsen the current immigration crisis.

The senators’ differing stances are a departure from their bipartisan efforts just a year ago when they both introduced the Dream Act of 2023, which would have allowed Dreamers to earn lawful permanent residence.

Immigration has increasingly become a flashpoint for politicians on both sides of the aisle ahead of the November presidential election, with Republicans overwhelmingly pointing to selected instances of undocumented noncitizens charged with murder and other serious crimes to push for hard-line immigration policies, while Democrats decry such efforts and deem them “cheap” political tactics.

According to the National Institute of Justice at the Justice Department, “Recent research suggests that those who immigrate (legally or illegally) are not more likely, and may even be less likely to commit crime in the US.”

“I think it’s very sad and tragic, what happens in the country when a very small, tiny population that does bad things is now put front stage to scare everyday Americans about who immigrants are,” said Pacheco, who has been in the U.S. since she was 8, after emigrating from Ecuador with her family.

Such dynamics are reflected in the pool of witnesses testifying before the Senate, which includes Tammy Nobles, the mother of slain 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton who sued the federal government in January alleging it allowed a gang-affiliated undocumented teen charged with Hamilton's killing into the country.

More than 800,000 young adults who were brought to the U.S. as children and lack legal immigration status have been able to work and study without fear of deportation since DACA was first implemented in 2012 as an executive action by then-President Barack Obama. An overwhelming majority of DACA recipients were born in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Then-President Donald Trump tried to shut down the program, though he was stopped by the courts. A series of lawsuits challenging DACA spearheaded by Republican-led states continue making their way through the courts.

An estimated 400,000 young people who would have been eligible to apply for DACA have been shut out of the program since 2021, when a federal judge decided to halt the program for new registrants amid the ongoing legal challenges.

In addition to Nobles and Pacheco, the other witnesses include Mitchell Soto-Rodriguez, a police officer in Illinois who has DACA, and two immigration policy experts.

Irving Hernandez, 20, one of the hundreds of TheDream.US scholars and alumni who signed the organization's letter to Congress, is among those who have been shut out of DACA in recent years.

A junior at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Hernandez is studying health psychology and aspires to have a career helping people dealing with anxiety, depression, trauma and other mental health challenges.

"I want to be such a huge catalyst for change," he said.

Hernandez said he wants lawmakers to "give Dreamers the opportunity to succeed, because we really don't get that opportunities."

Supporters of DACA say it’s one of the most successful policies for immigrant integration.

Since DACA started in 2012, recipients have contributed $108 billion to the economy, as well as $33 billion in combined taxes, according to FWD.us, a bipartisan group supporting immigration reform. Most DACA recipients are young adults who have lived in the U.S. for more than 16 years.

Pacheco, a longtime advocate trying to bridge the political divide on Dreamer legislation, recalled testifying at a congressional hearing over a decade ago, shortly after she became a DACA recipient. Now sitting in front of senators as someone who was able to become a naturalized U.S. citizen after she was sponsored by her husband, Pacheco said she hopes to convey her life story to them, show the success of the DACA program and put a spotlight on the immigrant youth who have been shut out of the program.

Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC News Digital. She reports, writes and produces stories for NBC Latino and NBCNews.com

EXCLUSIVE

IMMIGRATION

Democrats urge Biden to act on immigration as Trump threatens deportations

More than 80 lawmakers sent Biden some concrete ideas as his administration considers executive actions to address U.S. border crossings.

Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., said Biden "should seize this critical moment."

Kent Nishimura / Getty Images file

May 8, 2024, 
By Julie Tsirkin

WASHINGTON — Immigration advocates and Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to prioritize long-term undocumented immigrants as his administration weighs executive actions to curb record crossings along the southern border.

In a letter signed by more than 80 lawmakers, including members of the Congressional Hispanic and Progressive caucuses, the Democrats ask Biden to “take all available actions to streamline pathways to lawful status for undocumented immigrants” ahead of the November election.

”Deporting all such individuals — as former President Donald Trump has threatened to do if reelected — would devastate the American economy and destroy American families,” they added.

The letter offers concrete steps they say the White House could take, including streamlining the process by which DACA recipients, or undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, can seek to change to a non-immigrant status.

Arizona Sen. Kelly says immigration is the ‘most frustrating’ issue of his ‘adult life’

Lawmakers also ask Biden to unify families by allowing undocumented migrants married to U.S. citizens to seek parole on a case-by-case basis and reduce processing times for green card cases so that those migrants could be eligible to work.

The chair of the Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., said in a statement that Biden “should seize this critical moment by exercising his Executive Authority to rebuild our broken immigration system.”

“We urge him to provide pathways to citizenship and protections for the millions of long-term undocumented residents who have contributed to the rich fabric of the United States,” she said.

The new push follows a letter in March from Senate Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Immigration Subcommittee Chair Alex Padilla, D-Calif., outlining the same call to action.

”As the Biden administration considers executive actions on immigration, we must not return to failed Trump-era policies aimed at banning asylum and moving us backwards,” Padilla told NBC News in a statement.

On Monday, NBC News reported that Biden is considering using his executive authority in the coming weeks to potentially restrict the number of migrants who can enter the U.S.

The administration has been in touch with immigration advocacy groups ahead of any executive order.

A Department of Homeland Security official with knowledge of the discussions said the White House would most likely invoke power reserved for the president in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president discretion over who is admitted into the U.S.

Under that authority, Customs and Border Protection would be directed to block the entry of migrants crossing over from Mexico if daily border crossings passed a certain threshold. It’s similar to a provision of the border bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year, which was killed by Republicans, in part, at Trump’s urging.

Advocates are worried that the policy would be too restrictive on asylum, as are some Democrats who opposed the bill in February and called for a legal pathway to citizenship for undocumented people in the U.S. to be included in the text.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus lobbied the administration over months to no avail, with Democratic leadership eventually giving up its long-held red line on immigration reform to unlock aid to Ukraine amid a Republican blockade.

The GOP rejected the bipartisan compromise regardless, effectively sinking all near-term prospects for Congress to tackle an issue that has plagued the U.S. government for years.

Nonetheless, Padilla said this is Biden’s “opportunity” to “provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation.”

The California Democrat is leading a press conference Wednesday afternoon with lawmakers and advocates from FWD.us, American Families United, UnidosUS and CASA to spotlight the letter to Biden.

The president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group, said in a statement that most Americans “don’t have the opportunity to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of American families — but President Biden does.”

”He has the legal authority to provide affirmative relief to the spouses of U.S. citizens, and other longtime undocumented community members,” Todd Schulte said. “We hope, and believe, he will act soon to protect these American families.”

DACA recipients will now be eligible for federal health care coverage under new Biden rule

Over 100,000 young immigrants without health insurance will now be able to buy affordable health care through the plan, the administration estimates.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles rally in support of DACA recipients on the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the DACA case in 2019.Mario Tama / Getty Images file

May 3, 2024, 
By Nicole Acevedo


More than 100,000 young immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will soon become eligible to receive federal health care coverage for the first time since DACA was implemented over a decade ago.

The Biden administration will announce a new federal rule Friday allowing DACA recipients to enroll in a qualified health plan through the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace or become eligible for coverage through a basic health program.

An estimated 580,000 young adults who lack legal immigration status and have lived in the U.S. since they were children are currently working or studying without fear of deportation under DACA. An overwhelming majority of DACA recipients were born in Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Even though the program has helped them access better-paying jobs and educational opportunities since it was first implemented in 2012, DACA beneficiaries had been barred from accessing federally funded health insurance despite contributing billions in federal taxes, pouring funds into the nation’s federal health insurance system for years.

While many DACA recipients get health insurance through their jobs, more than a quarter are estimated to currently be uninsured.

By implementing a federal rule expanding the definition of “lawful presence” to include DACA recipients, they are “no longer excluded from receiving coverage from a quality health plan and financial assistance as well,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters in a press call Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that over 100,000 young immigrants who lack health insurance will now have a shot at accessing affordable health care.

“DACA recipients are currently three times more likely to be uninsured than the general U.S. population, and individuals without health insurance are less likely to receive preventative or routine health screenings. They delay necessary medical care, and they incur higher costs and debts when they do finally see care,” Becerra said, adding the new expansion “will improve their health and will strengthen the health and well-being of our nation.”

The new federal rule does not make DACA recipients eligible for the Medicaid program, according to senior administration officials, but gives them coverage through the Affordable Care Act and its marketplaces and financial assistance programs.

The announced rule is expected to go into effect Nov. 1, which coincides with the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period for 2025 health insurance plans, allowing newly eligible DACA recipients to have access to federal health care as early as December, according to HHS.

Friday’s announcement comes about a year after President Joe Biden first announced his administration’s plan to expand health care coverage to DACA recipients. The administration’s original plan aimed to implement the federal rule by November 2023.

Senior administration officials declined to comment this week on why the implementation of the rule was delayed.

However, White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden stressed that “the president will continue to fight” for DACA recipients, adding that “only Congress can provide them permanent status and a pathway to citizenship.”

While the program has been around for a decade, it faced legal challenges during the Trump administration and from Republican-led states. DACA has been closed to new registrants since July 2021 as lawsuits challenging the program continue making their way through the courts.

For more from NBC Latino, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Nicole Acevedo is a reporter for NBC News Digital. She reports, writes and produces stories for NBC Latino and NBCNews.com.

 

Worsening distress among Latinos in the United States

Researchers find the threat of deportation leads to psychological distress among both Latino citizens and noncitizens.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

Changes to the social and political landscape between 2011-2018, with dramatic events such as DACA rule changes, new presidential leadership, immigration bills and more, have left one major threat looming— deportation. 

How this threat has impacted the mental health of some undocumented Latino immigrants in the United States has been previously studied, but new research has found it’s not just undocumented immigrants who feel at risk. 

Analyzing data from 2011-2018, Amy Johnson, assistant professor of sociology at Lehigh University, and a team of research collaborators have found an increase over time in psychological distress among Latinos, both citizens and noncitizens, in the U.S. 

The study, “Deportation Threat Predicts Latino U.S. Citizens and Noncitizens’ Psychological Distress, 2011-2018,” co-authored by Johnson, Christopher Levesque, assistant professor of law and society and sociology at Kenyon College, Neil A. Lewis, Jr., associate professor of communication and social behavior at Cornell University, and Asad L. Asad, assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University, is forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). 

Looking at Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), for example, the researchers found when President Obama announced temporary reprieve from deportation for some undocumented immigrants, it relieved distress for naturalized citizens. 

This same pattern occurred following the announcement of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Oppositely, the dramatic societal event of the Trump presidency triggered anxiety and depressive symptoms among Latino noncitizens, worsening well-being. 

While there are direct impacts of changes to the federal administration and its policies, it’s not just presidential elections that matter, the research determines.

Beyond the federal level, the researchers find that day-to-day environments about immigration and immigration enforcement also impact psychological distress. For example, ICE’s detainer requests to local police, or even conversations online. 

“How people are talking about immigration and how salient immigration and deportation are to day-to-day life is potentially equally as important to distress as these more dramatic changes and events, like the Trump election or DACA,” Johnson explains.

It’s important to note that U.S.-born Latinos are not susceptible to deportation, but these events still impact their psychological health as well. Using Google Trends, the researchers show that U.S.-born Latinos experienced higher distress in periods where there are spikes in Google searches to topics related to deportation and immigration. 

Latinos across all citizenship statuses are responding to this feeling of deportation threat in a negative way, the researchers find. But the exact pathway through which that happens depends on citizenship status.

“The fact that racial and ethnic divisions are so prominent that even citizens feel the threat of deportation, and distress related to deportation threat, is really striking,” says Johnson. 

Although the impact of deportation threat could increase during the highly polarizing 2024 election year, it’s not just federal policy to consider as a solution, the researchers emphasize. Creating a sense of cultural belonging is essential as well. 

“We concretely show that the deportation-focused approach to immigration that the U.S. has been taking is psychologically damaging even to U.S. citizens,” says Johnson. “Moving forward, we can make the argument for policy change around deportation, but equally so, we can advocate for cultural practices of inclusion and belonging.”

---

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Deportation Threat Predicts Latino U.S. Citizens and Noncitizens' Psychological Distress, 2011-2018

If Trump Re-Elected: Flee for Canada or Stay and Fight?


While countless asylum-seekers and refugees will still certainly make their way to get enter the United States for a safer and more secure life, there's also the question of those wanting to get out.


An activist paints the border wall near Ciudad Juarez in 2017, when Trump was already deemed the least popular US leader in modern history.
(Photo by Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images)

REBECCA GORDON
Jan 08, 2024

TomDispatch

Back in 1968, my father announced that, if Richard Nixon were elected president that November, he was going to move us all to Canada. I’m not sure who “us all” actually was, since my younger brother and I were then living with my mother and my parents had been divorced for years. Still, he was determined to protect us, should someone he considered a dangerous anti-Semite make it into the Oval Office — and leaving the country seemed to him like the best way to do it.

As it happened, Nixon did win in 1968 and none of us moved to Canada. Still, I suspect my father’s confidence that, if things got too bad here, we could always head somewhere else (Canada? Israel?) was a mental refuge for him that fit his own background very well. It was, after all, what his father had done in 1910, when his family was attacked by Cossacks in what’s Ukraine today. His parents had him smuggled out of town in a horse-drawn rig under bales of hay. He then walked across a significant part of Europe and took a boat from Antwerp, Belgium, to New York City. There, he was met by a cousin who brought him to Norfolk, Virginia. Eventually, my grandfather managed to bring his whole family to Norfolk, where he became, among other things, the president of his local Zionist club, fostering his dream of refuge. My father grew up in the haze of that dream.

In the Shadow of the World Wars

In fact, my father’s reliance on the guarantee that he could go “somewhere else” accorded well with the post-World War II international consensus that people in danger of persecution where they lived had a right to seek refuge in another country. Shortly after the formation of the United Nations, that view was codified in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The Convention consolidated various treaties created by European nations to address the desperate situation of millions of people displaced by the two World Wars. It defined a refugee as a person who:
“As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”


More recent regional agreements have expanded that definition to include people subject to external aggression, internal violence, or the serious disturbance of public order, whose lives, in short, have become unsustainable thanks to various forms of systemic violence. The Convention also laid out the obligations of nations receiving refugees — including providing housing, work permits, and education — while recognizing that receiving countries might need assistance from the international community to meet those obligations. It also affirmed the importance of maintaining family unity (something blatantly violated by the Trump administration under its policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexican border).

With the phrase “events occurring before 1 January 1951” the Convention’s framers alluded to the two world wars of the preceding decades. What they didn’t foresee was that millions more refugees would be churned up in the second half of the twentieth century, much less what humanity would prove capable of producing in this one.

The trajectory was clear enough, however, when, the year before Nixon was elected, the 1967 Protocol to the Convention removed limits on migration-producing events occurring after 1951 and geographical restrictions of any sort. No matter when or where people became refugees, they were now subject to protection in all 148 nations that signed on, including the United States, which signed and ratified both the original Convention and the 1967 Protocol.

Refugees Everywhere

Twenty-first-century conflicts have already created millions of refugees. In fact, by mid-year 2023, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) put the number at 36.4 million worldwide, a number that has doubled in just the last seven years. Three countries alone — Syria (6.5 million), Afghanistan (6.1 million), and Ukraine (5.9 million) —accounted for 52% of all external refugees in 2023.

And keep in mind that those 36.4 million refugees only include people officially registered with the UNHCR (30.5 million) or with UNWRA, the U.N. Works Relief Agency for Palestinians in the Near East (5.9 million). UNWRA was created in 1952, specifically to serve people displaced in the formation of Israel in 1948. Unlike the UNHCR, it provides direct service to registered Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and Gaza.

And that figure doesn’t even include the majority of people fleeing war and other systemic and climate violence, who are “internally displaced persons.” They are not counted as refugees in the legal sense because, while they’ve lost their homes, they still remain inside their own national borders. There were — take a breath — 62.2 million internally displaced persons when the UNHCR issued that mid-2023 report.

Where do we find the majority of internally displaced persons? More than 90% of them have been uprooted by events in seven key countries or regions: Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, various Latin America and Caribbean countries, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Ukraine.

Which countries are taking in refugees? According to the UNHCR, “Low- and middle-income countries host 75% of the world’s refugees and other people in need of international protection.” Furthermore, “the Least Developed Countries provide asylum to 20% of the total.” Despite Donald Trump’s histrionic claims about asylum-seekers pouring into the United States and “poisoning the blood” of this country, the United States is not, in fact, a major recipient of international refugees.

Nor is the United Kingdom, whose Tory government has come up with a perverse scheme to potentially ship any asylum seekers approaching Great Britain by boat to Rwanda for “processing” in return for financial support of various kinds. (In November 2023, that country’s supreme court nixed the plan, but in December the government signed a new agreement with Rwanda, which it claims will satisfy the court’s objections to the agreement.)

In fact, Americans may be surprised to learn that the two countries taking in the most refugees at the moment are Iran and Turkey, at 3.4 million each, followed by Germany and Colombia at 2.5 million each and Pakistan at 2.1 million.

Let me highlight just two areas where, at this very moment, refugees are being created in enormous numbers with no apparent end in sight. One of them people around the world just can’t take their eyes off right now (and for good reason!), while the other seems almost entirely forgotten.

Gaza: Since Hamas’s vicious and criminal October 7th attack on targets in Israel, the world has focused intently on events in Israel-Palestine. The UNHCR’s 2023 report was compiled before the attack and Israel’s subsequent and ongoing genocidal destruction of Gaza, which has seen the deaths of more than 21,000 Gazans (a majority of them women and children) and the loss of more than half of its housing stock and three-quarters of its 36 hospitals. In one sense, Gaza’s residents are not new refugees. More than 85% of its pre-war population of 2.3 million are now “merely” considered internally displaced. Yes, they have been starved, deprived of medical care and potable water, harried by bombs and missiles falling on homes and temporary shelters from one part of that 25-mile-long strip of land to the other, and forced into an ever-shrinking area near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Still, for now they remain in Gaza with nowhere else to go.

It’s no secret, however, that the Israeli government intends to change that. On Christmas Day 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Israeli newspaper Hayom Daily that he is seeking the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza. A week earlier, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador and now rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, had opined that “the Palestinians should have gone to the Rafah crossing and Egypt would have taken care of them.” Even if Egypt were willing to accept more than two million displaced Gazans — which it is not — it would be hard to see such a migration as anything but a forced population transfer, which international law considers a crime against humanity.

Sudan: While the world has watched Gaza’s decimation in horror, an even larger refugee crisis in the African nation of Sudan has gone almost unremarked upon. In 2019, a massive nonviolent movement of Sudanese civilians led to a military coup against longtime dictator Omar Bashir. While the military initially agreed to hand power over to civilian rule in two years, by October 2021, its leaders had declared their intention to remain in power, while the United States, despite rhetoric supporting civilian rule, stood idly by. Since then, war between the military government and a paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces, has displaced 4.5 million or more within Sudan, while another 1.2 million have fled to neighboring countries.

Good “Refugees” and Bad “Economic Migrants”

Human beings have always moved around the world, beginning with our first forays out of Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. However, it is only within the last two centuries or so that countries have attempted to control human transit across their borders. International law concerning refugees is even newer, first forged, as noted, in the critical period immediately following World War II.

One perhaps unintentional consequence of those laws, created half a century ago to protect refugees, is the relatively new distinction between them and “economic migrants.” Refugees able to demonstrate a “well-founded fear of being persecuted” have the right to seek asylum in any country that’s signed the U.N. refugee convention. Anyone else, however economically desperate or deeply endangered from, say, increasingly fierce climate-change-induced weather extremes, has no actual right under international law to move to a safer country. That legal reality hardly makes the existential desperation of such migrants any less genuine, as evidenced by the fact that they risk — and lose — their lives daily in perilous sea crossings or thousand-mile treks like the one that passes through Central America’s deadly Darien Gap in a bid for survival. At present, however, international law offers them no special protection.

This will have to change, and quickly, as global warming makes ever more parts of the world increasingly uninhabitable, often in the very areas that are the least responsible for the actual burning of fossil fuels. We all live on one planet, and no country or individual, no matter how rich, can hope to remain insulated from the ever more devastating effects of the continued record burning of fossil fuels and the desperate overheating of our planet.

Bad News at the Border

My father was pretty sure that the Canadians would be glad to receive him and his kids in the event of Nixon’s election. I don’t know what the rules were back then, but today Canada allows “Express Entry for skilled immigrants,” presumably including people from the U.S. wishing to cross that country’s southern border.

It’s not so easy, however, for immigrants, skilled or otherwise, hoping to cross the southern border of the United States these days. Despite our signature on the Convention on refugees, people seeking refugee status in this country now face almost insurmountable barriers. And those designated mere “economic” migrants have little hope of ever gaining legal residence in the United States.

Despite his promise to take “immediate actions to reform our immigration system,” three years after his election and the defeat of the man who had promised to build that “big, fat, beautiful wall” on our southern border, President Biden has done little to alleviate the situation. While he did end the Trump family separation plan and allow Covid-era restrictions on migration to expire, he’s kept in place a version of another Trump policy: denying asylum in the United States to migrants who fail to first request it in another country they’re passing through on the way to this one. So, as many as 10,000 immigrants a day now cross illegally into the United States. Since May, almost half a million of them have been caught and deported. As of this writing, 11,000 are living in camps on the Mexican side of the border, having applied for asylum using the Biden administration’s cell phone app. No one knows how long they will be there while this country’s overburdened asylum system limps along and election 2024 fast approaches (along with Trump’s proposed plans to create vast border deportation camps).

To be fair to Biden, with the exception of President Obama’s creation of a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status for immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children, no administration or Congress has done much of significance over the past 40 years to address immigration issues in this country. What institutions do exist, including immigration courts, remain desperately underfunded, leading to staggeringly lengthy waiting times for asylum applicants.

The situation at the frontiers of wealthy countries like the U.S. will undoubtedly only get worse. Nations like ours can’t hope to keep the human urge for survival forever bottled up on our borders.

My father said he’d go to Canada if Nixon were elected. Recently, I’ve heard a few friends echo that intention should another dangerous authoritarian — Donald Trump — regain the White House in January 2025. If that were to happen, people around the world, citizens and migrants, the sheltered and unsheltered alike, can expect things to get so much worse. For us in the United States, emigration won’t be an option. Like it or not, we’ll have to stay and fight.

© 2023 TomDispatch.com


REBECCA GORDON
Rebecca Gordon is an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco. Prior to teaching at USF, Rebecca spent many years as an activist in a variety of movements, including for women's and LGBTQ+ liberation, the Central America and South Africa solidarity movements and for racial justice in the United States. She is the author of "American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes" (2016) and previously, "Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States" (2014). She teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. You can contact her through the Mainstreaming Torture website.
Full Bio >

El Paso Residents Say “Border Crisis” Is Manufactured, Reject Militarization


Border militarization, not immigration, is what is making El Paso unsafe, residents say.

By Sam Carliner ,

TRUTHOUT

PublishedOctober 16, 2023

A Texas National Guard soldier stands vigil at a makeshift migrant camp near the U.S.-Mexico border fence on May 11, 2023, in El Paso, Texas.

JOHN MOORE / GETTY IMAGES
Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

El Paso, Texas, has increasingly become the subject of an intense national conversation.

The New York Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal report that migrant surges are straining the city, the country and the economy. These are just three headlines from a barrage of coverage of the “crisis” at the border.

Nastassia Artalejo, an El Paso resident whose family has lived in the city for generations, is sick of hearing her home described this way.

“It’s really frustrating to be here and see and hear so many polarizing opinions,” Artalejo said. “So much of what is talked about in the media is from a third-party or outsider perspective, as opposed to the opinion being from someone that actually lives here.”

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Ivonne Diaz, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and immigrant rights activist, expressed similar frustration.

“When I meet with people that don’t live here and are visiting for the first time, they say it’s nothing like [they’ve] been hearing,” Diaz said. “El Paso is not like how they put it in the news.”

Both acknowledged the large number of migrants making their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. Neither feels that the increase in migrants is fueling violence or chaos in the city. However, Artalejo, Diaz, and several other residents of El Paso had a lot to say about how the response to migrants and the mainstream rhetoric about the city is changing their home.

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

“What They’re Trained to Do Is Kill People”

El Paso is not just any border city. It is the second-most crossed point of entry into the United States. As the U.S. government has steadily developed more restrictions to entry into the country, El Paso has also become a hub for various federal agencies to police migration. It is also a military city, located right next to Fort Bliss, an Army base spanning 1.12 million acres across Texas and New Mexico. For decades it has been the norm for residents of El Paso to see these various federal agents and soldiers operating in and around the city.

There have been several points in the city’s history where residents have noticed a surge in the presence of these forces.

In 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott launched Operation Lone Star, deploying Texas National Guard troops to the border. Other Republican governors from 14 different states have sent their states’ soldiers to the border as part of the operation. While these Republicans justify the deployments by arguing that the Biden administration has had lenient border policies, the president has actually continued many of the anti-immigrant laws passed by the Trump administration. Recently, Biden waived 26 federal laws to construct a border wall in South Texas which will run through public lands and habitats for endangered species. In May, the federal government deployed an additional 1,500 soldiers to the border. A fact sheet published by the White House in March boasts: “Over the past two years, the Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him, deployed the most agents ever — more than 23,000 — to address the situation at the border…”

“More and more military is coming into the city,” Artalejo said. “It’s not making us safer. It’s making the city more violent.”

Diaz said that the presence of federal agents and soldiers is intimidating, especially for immigrants living in El Paso.

“I have to drive by the border and I see more persons and it doesn’t make me feel safer,” Diaz said. “Especially me having DACA. I can only imagine having people who are still undocumented here.”

Robert Heyman, strategic advisor at the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, which advocates for immigrant rights and provides legal services to low-income immigrants, has lived in El Paso for decades and witnessed various ways that border enforcement has ramped up.

“Especially in these moments of national moral panic around the border, things that would not be acceptable in other parts of the country are done to folks living at the border,” Heyman said.

Heyman compared the current militarization of El Paso to the 1990s. During that decade, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton oversaw several initiatives which increased the presence of Border Patrol and U.S. military forces around the U.S.-Mexico border. These operations increased the number of migrant deaths, but it wasn’t until U.S. Marines deployed at the border killed an 18-year-old American citizen that the military suspended its policing of the border.

While the recent National Guard deployments have yet to produce a similar example of U.S. troops killing a U.S. citizen on domestic soil, there have been two instances this year of soldiers injuring people while policing the border. In January, a soldier shot and injured a migrant, and in August another soldier shot at a Mexican citizen across the border.

Heyman did not mince words criticizing the deployment of soldiers to the border.

“The U.S. military has different soldiers in different roles, but a core tenet of what they’re trained to do is to kill people,” Heyman said. “When you start putting them into roles that require different skill sets that are fundamentally misaligned with that, you really start creating risks.”

Artalejo’s family history makes her uniquely aware of these risks.

“Obviously, it’s significantly more militarized now, but there’s always been a really large military presence in El Paso for as long as the city has been a legitimate city,” Artalejo said.

She described how during World War II, two soldiers stationed at Fort Bliss had been drinking late at night at a bar across from the apartment complex where her great-grandfather lived with his wife and kids. The soldiers and two women ended up loudly playing Marco Polo outside of the building, prompting Artalejo’s great-grandfather to come outside and tell them to quiet down so his kids could sleep. One of the soldiers used a pair of brass knuckles to hit Artalejo’s great-grandfather in the head, killing him.

“My family was left without a parental or father figure,” Artalejo said. “Just a single mother with lots of children.”

One of those children was her grandfather, who passed the story down to her. She felt it was important for people to understand that the base, not just border enforcement operations, is central to the militarization of the city and the violence that it entails.
“We Had to Be the Order”

El Paso has always been militarized to some degree, but 2016 placed it at the center of national politics and unleashed violent dynamics which continue to shape the city.

Donald Trump infamously launched his presidential campaign by calling immigrants “drug dealers,” “criminals” and “rapists,” and promised to build a wall to keep migrants out. As president, Trump enacted many brutal policies including family separation. He also talked about migrants as “invaders” posing danger to the United States.

The El Paso community witnessed the logical result of Trump’s provocative rhetoric in 2019 when Patrick Crusius came to their city. Inspired by Trump’s fearmongering about migrants, Crusius shot up a Walmart parking lot, killing 23 people and injuring another 22.

Trump activated many white supremacists throughout the country. He also activated many immigrant rights organizers who remain at the forefront of aiding migrants coming to El Paso. One such organizer is Juan Paul Flores Vazquez, a DACA recipient whose family came to the United States from Mexicali. Trump’s attacks on immigrant rights inspired Flores Vazquez to move to El Paso in 2018 to organize against these attacks. He reflected on the sense of danger that came with Trump’s presidency.


“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages.”

“There was always a lingering feeling of dread,” Flores Vazquez said. “I immediately saw how that affected the border and our community right from the jump.”

He has continued his activism through the group Undocumented 915 which provides news and community alerts for El Paso’s undocumented community, and provides donations including food and clothing for migrants arriving in the city. He said there has not been much of a difference under the Biden administration. The migrants coming to El Paso still rely on local activists to help them find shelter, food, legal assistance, and other needs that the government does not provide. The federal agencies continue to harass migrants and activists in the city.

Flores Vazquez described some of the repression he witnessed around a migrant shelter earlier this year.

“The feds were lurking around alleys and streets, snatching people of all ages,” he said. “There [were] multiple videos from security cameras of local businesses that would catch Border Patrol being aggressively violent with young people … There’s a couple videos being leaked. Imagine all the stuff we don’t get to see.”

Juan Ortiz is an organizer at Casa Carmelita, a migrant shelter in El Paso. Ortiz’s family is Rarámuri, one of several communities indigenous to the land that the U.S.-Mexico border cuts across. During the Trump administration, Ortiz felt personally connected to the administration’s family separation policies because his sister-in-law was undocumented and he worried she could be separated from her kids. Through Indigenous rights activism, immigrant rights activism and mutual aid, he proudly continues what he describes as El Paso’s rich history of leftist activity, which has included the 1917 Bath Riots, the Chicano rights movement and recent activity to support migrants. He has seen his share of repression, but says that some of the worst he’s ever witnessed has been in El Paso.

“I call it a police city-state now,” Ortiz said. “When the youth had a lot of rallies around George Floyd … at one point, they had a rally downtown and there was so much presence.… It was different colors and shades of uniforms but everyone looked like they were prepared for war.… You couldn’t tell who was military, who was Border Patrol, who was police.”

He added that during the protests against racist police violence in 2020, white supremacist militias also flocked to the city.

While federal agencies and militarized forces proliferate in El Paso, the city remains one of the poorest zip codes in the United States. The city’s poverty stands in stark contrast to the estimated $333 billion that the federal government has spent on immigration enforcement since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

Flores Vazquez spoke about how this money could have helped shelter migrants, as well as the city’s houseless population.

“[A housing complex] which has been abandoned for years just caught on fire,” Flores Vazquez said. “One of the things that everyone’s been saying is, ‘Wow, they could’ve used all that money they’ve been spending on building a fortress around the border, and invested it in reopening some of those complexes for migrants or for people who are just out in the street.’”

Ortiz feels that how most people talk about the situation at the border fuels the dynamics that are hurting the city. He wishes that more people would look to the example the El Paso community has set by assisting migrants.

“People need to understand it’s a human-created, policy-created crisis,” Ortiz said. “Create the machinations that create the chaos, and then point to it and say chaos.… The system was always going to be the chaos, so we had to be the order. The people on the border are the order.”

Here's how much the unauthorized immigrant population in the US grew during the pandemic

Rafael Carranza, Arizona Republic
Sat, September 16, 2023

New estimates show how the number of unauthorized migrants living in the United States grew slightly despite global restrictions on travel at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to reach 11.2 million.

That's an increase of 200,000 from 2019, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Migrant Policy Institute, which analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. are based on the 2021 survey, meaning that those numbers do not reflect the historic increase in encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border over the past two years and the expansion of humanitarian parole programs since the removal of pandemic restrictions at the border.

Ariel Ruiz Soto, one of the report's authors and a senior policy analyst at the Migrant Policy Institute, said this means the numbers today are likely much higher even though the federal government has boosted deportations.

"If you look at the border today, you'll see that of the thousands of people that come every day in the country, more of them are seeking asylum. And that asylum process takes a long time," he said. "So because of the way that we measure our estimates, asylum seekers who seek protection defensively, meaning that they irregularly and are in the process of removals would have to wait for years to go to an immigration court would be included in our estimates. And because of that, it is likely that the numbers will certainly have increased in 2022 and 2023."

What the available data does show is the continuation of a trend that has been building for nearly two decades, a reversal in migration from Mexico. Since peaking at 7.7 million in 2007, the Migrant Policy Institute said the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico has dropped to 5.2 million in 2021 as more of them return to Mexico.

That means that Mexican immigrants account for less than half (46 percent) of the total unauthorized immigrant population in the United States. As the share of Mexican immigrants has fallen, representation from other countries has surged.

Ruiz Soto said they especially saw an increase in the number of migrants from places farther away. In addition to Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the institute's analysis identified a notable rise in unauthorized immigrants from South American countries such as Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil. Three Asian countries round out the top 10 countries of origin: India, China and the Philippines.

Opinion piece on immigration in Arizona: A little border chaos makes 'The View' sound less Manhattan and more Phoenix

The overall unauthorized immigrant population has remained relatively stable at about 11 million for nearly two decades. The report attributed that to U.S. immigration removal policies, adding that nearly 4.7 million immigrants have been deported from the country since 2008.

While the unauthorized immigrant population increased by 200,000 during the pandemic, Ruiz Soto said, the travel restrictions not only kept people out, but many immigrants were unable to leave the country. Additionally, in the aftermath of pandemic lockdowns, the U.S. began to expel all migrants at the border using a public health rule known as Title 42. Under that policy, the U.S. turned away 2.8 million migrants.

The report noted that while they used the term "unauthorized" to refer to the immigrants living in the United States without a legal visa or green card, those numbers include thousands of individuals with temporary protections, including humanitarian parole or deferred action or DACA recipients.

Federal judge again declares that DACA is illegal with issue likely to be decided by Supreme Court


 People rally outside the Supreme Court over President Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), at the Supreme Court in Washington, Nov. 12, 2019. A federal judge on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

 Susana Lujano, left, a dreamer from Mexico who lives in Houston, joins other activists to rally in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 15, 2022. A federal judge on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, June 18, 2020. A federal judge on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. 

AP Photos/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File

BY JUAN A. LOZANO
 September 13, 2023

HOUSTON (AP) — While a federal judge on Wednesday declared illegal a revised version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, he declined to order an immediate end to the program and the protections it offers to recipients.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen agreed with Texas and eight other states suing to stop the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. The judge’s ruling was ultimately expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, sending the program’s fate before the high court for a third time.

“While sympathetic to the predicament of DACA recipients and their families, this Court has expressed its concerns about the legality of the program for some time,” Hanen wrote in his 40-page ruling. “The solution for these deficiencies lies with the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches. Congress, for any number of reasons, has decided not to pass DACA-like legislation ... The Executive Branch cannot usurp the power bestowed on Congress by the Constitution — even to fill a void.”

Hanen’s order extended the current injunction that had been in place against DACA, which barred the government from approving any new applications, but left the program intact for existing recipients during the ongoing legal review.

Hanen also declined a request by the states to order the program’s end within two years. Hanen said his order does not require the federal government to take any actions against DACA recipients, who are known as “Dreamers.”

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, which is representing DACA recipients in the lawsuit, said it will ultimately be up to higher courts, including the Supreme Court, to rule on DACA’s legality and whether Texas proved it had been harmed by the program.

“Judge Hanen has consistently erred in resolving both of these issues, and today’s ruling is more of the same flawed analysis. We look forward to continuing to defend the lawful and much-needed DACA program on review in higher courts,” Saenz said.

The Biden administration criticized the judge’s ruling.

“We are deeply disappointed in today’s DACA ruling from the District Court in Southern Texas,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Wednesday night. “... As we have long maintained, we disagree with the District Court’s conclusion that DACA is unlawful, and will continue to defend this critical policy from legal challenges. While we do so, consistent with the court’s order, DHS will continue to process renewals for current DACA recipients and DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) may continue to accept DACA applications.”

The Texas Attorney General’s Office, which represented the states in the lawsuit, and the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the federal government, didn’t immediately return emails or calls seeking comment.

The states have argued the Obama administration didn’t have the authority to first create the program in 2012 because it circumvented Congress.

In 2021, Hanen had declared the program illegal, ruling it had not been subject to public notice and comment periods required under the federal Administrative Procedures Act.

The Biden administration tried to satisfy Hanen’s concerns with a new version of DACA that took effect in October 2022 and was subject to public comments as part of a formal rule-making process.

But Hanen, who was appointed by then-President George W. Bush in 2002, ruled the updated version of DACA was still illegal as the Biden administration’s new version was essentially the same as the old version, started under the Obama administration. Hanen had previously said DACA was unconstitutional.

Hanen also had previously ruled the states had standing to file their lawsuit because they had been harmed by the program.

The states have claimed they incur hundreds of millions of dollars in health care, education and other costs when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally. The states that sued are Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, West Virginia, Kansas and Mississippi.

Those defending the program — the federal government, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the state of New Jersey — had argued the states failed to present evidence that any of the costs they allege they have incurred have been tied to DACA recipients. They also argued Congress has given the Department of Homeland Security the legal authority to set immigration enforcement policies.

There were 578,680 people enrolled in DACA at the end of March, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The program has faced a roller coaster of court challenges over the years.

In 2016, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 over an expanded DACA and a version of the program for parents of DACA recipients. In 2020, the high court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA, allowing it to stay in place.

In 2022, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld Hanen’s earlier ruling declaring DACA illegal, but sent the case back to him to review changes made to the program by the Biden administration.

President Joe Biden and advocacy groups have called on Congress to pass permanent protections for “ dreamers.” Congress has failed multiple times to pass proposals called the DREAM Act to protect DACA recipients.

“We continue to urge Congress and President Biden to create permanent solutions for all immigrants to ensure none are left in the perilous road DACA has been on for the past decade,” Veronica Garcia, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy organization, said in a statement.
___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

‘Maus’ evades a ban in Iowa after school district cites ‘ambiguity’ in new state law

After uproar, Urbandale Schools outside Des Moines walks back removal of Holocaust graphic novel

By ANDREW LAPIN

Today, 

An illustrative image of Art Spiegelman's 'Maus.' (Philissa Cramer/JTA)

JTA — A new Iowa state law forbidding instruction on sexual and gender identity prompted one school district this week to briefly order staff to remove Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and hundreds of other books from its shelves.

But days later, following national outrage, the district reversed course, issuing a trimmed-down list of 65 books for removal that contained neither “Maus,” nor several other Jewish-themed books on the first list.

The quick about-face in Urbandale Schools, a suburb of Des Moines, was the latest example of the confusing and often contradictory landscape for Jewish texts amid the growing nationwide “parents’ rights” movement targeting what its proponents say are inappropriate books in schools. In Iowa and other states, that movement has fueled legislation targeting educators who distribute content that could be interpreted as sexual.

“We have determined that there is ambiguity regarding the extent to which books that contain topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation need to be removed from libraries,” the district’s superintendent, Rosalie Daca, wrote in a memo to staff Thursday that an Urbandale spokesperson shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“As such,” the memo continued, with bolded emphasis, “we will pause removing books that reference gender identity and sexual orientation until we receive guidance from the Iowa Department of Education.”

The memo followed one from earlier this week that, as reported in the Des Moines Register, instructed staff to comb their libraries for more than 300 books in potential violation of the law, including “Maus,” Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” the Holocaust novel “Sophie’s Choice” and Jewish author Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play for adults, “Angels in America.” That initial list prompted a passionate response from the literary free-expression advocacy group PEN America, which implored the district not to follow through with its removals.

In pointed language, administrators blamed the state’s education department for issuing vague and unclear guidance on how to comply with the new law, which Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed in May and is scheduled to take effect in January 2024. The law states that it is “prohibiting instruction related to gender identity and sexual orientation in school districts” and also forbids “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.”

It’s unclear how “Maus” wound up on the initial list of books flagged for removal, or how the district’s decision not to touch books related to “gender identity and sexual orientation” resulted in a stay of execution for Spiegelman’s book. “Maus” recounts the author’s parents’ traumatic experiences surviving the Holocaust, and doesn’t contain any discussion of gender or sexual identity. It does contain a single panel of a nude mouse representing Spiegelman’s mother after she dies by suicide.

The same image previously provoked the ire of a Tennessee school board, which removed “Maus” from its district’s middle-school curriculum over the image last year and catapulted the book into the center of the nationwide book-ban debate. Districts in Missouri also previously removed or considered removing “Maus” over the wording of a new state law forbidding the distribution of explicit materials.

Daca’s memo noted that the Urbandale district compiled its initial list of books by culling “book lists from other states who had passed similar laws.” The district did not respond to follow-up questions about ”Maus.”

Other Jewish books that have been rescued from district-wide book removals include “The Fixer” in South Carolina and “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” in Texas, though other districts in Florida have permanently removed the Anne Frank adaptation as well as a Holocaust novel by Jodi Picoult and a picture book about Purim featuring a same-sex couple.

One Jewish-themed book that remains on Urbandale’s removal list is Andre Aciman’s novel “Call Me by Your Name,” which details a Jewish LGBTQ youth’s coming of age and is explicit in its description of sexual acts.

As asylum-seekers struggle while waiting for work permits, Chicago businesses can’t fill jobs










Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Laura Rodríguez Presa, Talia Soglin, Nell Salzman, Chicago Tribune
Sun, July 16, 2023 at 4:00 AM MDT·11 min read

Huberth Espinoza, 65, sat on a bench outside the 5th District police station in Pullman on a Wednesday in late June, waiting to be picked up for work.

An asylum-seeker from Venezuela, Espinoza said he came to Chicago to work but could not immediately get a job permit. So he worked for about two weeks for a man who would take him and other migrants to do odd jobs — construction, painting and yardwork — but he had not been picked up or paid in a week.

Espinoza said he was owed about $600.

“He told us he’d be back at 9 a.m., but he never came. We don’t know if he’s going to pay us,” he told the Tribune.

For most migrants, finding work is volatile and sometimes dangerous because they lack work authorization permits. And while many migrants work under the table, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation, Illinois business owners say they have open jobs they can’t fill. Business leaders, along with Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other political leaders, have urged the federal government to expedite the process.

Last month, more than 100 employers and business group leaders from more than a dozen states, including Illinois, signed an open letter coordinated by the American Business Immigration Coalition asking the White House to allow states to sponsor work permits for new migrants and longtime undocumented workers.

Signatories include leaders of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the Illinois Restaurant Association and the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association.

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García began circulating a letter urging President Joe Biden to provide and expedite work permits to both new migrants and long-term contributing immigrant workers — including DACA-eligible, farmworkers and essential workers — as “one of the more sensible solutions, which are key to addressing America’s labor shortages and lowering inflation.”

“The solution to labor shortages is right here at hand,” he said. “In addition to that, it helps to address the cost of migrants and providing them with food and shelter because if they can gainfully work with authorization, then we won’t be scrambling to find funding for New York, Chicago and LA, or other cities, because it’s having a real impact on those budgets.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for Pritzker said the governor had met with White House officials “urging them to expedite work authorizations so that those who wish to live and work in Illinois can do so with dignity and respect.”

More than 10,000 asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela, have arrived in Chicago since August, when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began busing refugees to cities led by Democrats. Many migrants are living in harsh conditions in city-run shelters or police stations; the Chicago Police Department said earlier this month it was investigating alleged sexual misconduct by at least one officer against a migrant or migrants, potentially including a minor, housed at a West Side police station.

Many migrants have left the shelters to find work and a place to live, even if it could affect their chances of getting asylum, or if the pay is low and the job conditions are poor, Kalman Resnick, an immigration lawyer, said during a panel with the Neighborhood Building Owners Alliance on how the real estate industry can help the new arrivals.

The timeline to file for asylum and subsequent job authorization depends on each migrant’s case and several factors including their way of entry to the U.S. and what policies were in place at the time, said Katherine Greenslade, director of the Resurrection Project’s legal clinic, a nonprofit that provides services for migrants. “It’s complex and lengthy; that’s why we recommend legal counsel,” she said.

In most cases, asylum-seekers cannot apply for permits to work legally in the U.S. until five months after they’ve submitted their asylum applications, something many are not able to do until they’ve already been in the country for months.

“Many of them are in shelters or in various unstable housing situations where getting a legal screening is just not the first or even the fifth thing on their mind,” said Megan Davis, the director of legal services at Erie Neighborhood House, a nonprofit that provides legal aid and other help to migrants.

It can take more than six months, on average, for a person to receive a work permit after they file an application, Greenslade said.

The backlog of applications at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has slowed processing times even further, meaning some applicants for work permits must wait up to 15 months from the time they apply, according to García’s letter.

In the meantime, many migrants work under the table. Their work can be precarious, leaving them with unpredictable schedules, earnings and at higher risks of exploitation, wage theft and abuse. And working illegally, especially if they do so by using fake documents or documents that belong to U.S. citizens, can ultimately have adverse impacts on migrants’ immigration cases, legal aid attorneys said.

In Venezuela, 30-year-old Patricia Moyeja was four months away from getting a degree in nursing when she came to the United States. Twenty-three-year-old Julianna Ovalles was studying to be a police officer, and her sister Alexa, 22, was studying business management.

The women, who now live in city-run shelters, waited for work in late June in the parking lot of a Home Depot in the Chatham neighborhood, where hundreds of people were looking for jobs.

“We’ve been coming here for a week. We are looking for jobs cleaning houses, painting, whatever we can find,” said the younger Ovalles sister.

The job search would be easier if she had a work permit, said her older sister, Julianna. For now all they can do is wait and hope for the best, she said. The women said they make $120 to $150 a day if they’re lucky.

“We are good, we’re safe here. I like the city of Chicago, but we need more opportunities to work. We came here to work,” she said.

Day laboring has become a common way for migrants in Chicago to find work. Like the two sisters, many go stand by hardware stores, waiting to be approached and offered a job. They work as contractors and get paid in cash, typically by the day.

Even migrants who have college educations or have worked in skilled professions including accounting, teaching, nursing or the law have to take on precarious jobs that in the long run won’t allow them the opportunity to learn English, said Laarni Livings, a head volunteer with a network of volunteers in the South Loop area.

Legal aid workers in Chicago said they believed very few of the new asylum-seekers have received work permits.

The Resurrection Project has assisted a “handful” of new arrivals who are far enough along in the legal process to apply for work permits, but most of their applications are still pending, Greenslade said. Only one asylum-seeker whom the group has worked with has received a work permit; that person was able to submit their asylum application last fall, she said.

At Centro Romero, an organization that provides social services for the immigrant community, the legal department has screened over 2,000 new arrivals since last fall, said Diego F. Samayoa, associate director. Of those, fewer than 5% have been approved so far, he said, adding that they are concerned many applicants may be denied because their parole has expired.

Most asylum-seekers are paroled into the country, which means they are allowed in temporarily to process their asylum case. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could, at its discretion, grant a parolee temporary employment authorization, if it is not inconsistent with the purpose and duration of their parole.

That, however, is rare, Greenslade said. Most people paroled in are given a year or just a few months in the country, so they won’t get the permit on time, or if it arrives, it’ll be expired.

When a mother from Venezuela, who declined to give her name, arrived in the Chicago area last September, she sent out her application for employment authorization with the help of Centro Romero. But her parole ended at the end of November, which means that even if she gets approval from USCIS, the permit could be expired by the time it arrives.

Most of the asylum-seekers in shelters may not have even started the process, as they wait to be connected with legal counsel, Greenslade said. But the number of migrants in need of legal services surpasses existing nonprofit legal capacity, and most cannot pay for a private attorney, she said.

But as migrants wait for work permits, Chicago businesses want to hire them.

“Everybody’s short on workers right now,” said Brad Tietz, vice president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. Migrants looking for work, he said, would be a welcome “pool of talent” to enter the area workforce.

There are upward of 1,800 open hotel jobs in the Chicago area, according to Indeed.com. The hotel industry, which has struggled to fill positions after losing workers during the pandemic, has lobbied in Washington for a bill that would shorten the time migrants must wait for work permit eligibility to one month after they apply for asylum.

Michael Jacobson, president of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, said the labor shortage is present across the hotel industry, but the need is particularly acute for culinary workers.

“When there’s a banquet for 1,000 people at one of our big hotels downtown, just imagine how many people are needed to service that meal,” he said. Most city hotels now pay over $23 an hour as a starting wage, Jacobson said.

“There are people who are living in hotels who have applied for asylum and they are not allowed to work in the hotel,” said Chirag Shah, executive vice president of the national hotel association. “In a lot of circumstances, the hotels have open jobs.”

Sam Sanchez, who owns Chicago bars and restaurants including Old Crow Smokehouse and Moe’s Cantina, said he exchanged phone numbers with migrants hoping to find work when he volunteered at a food distribution in the spring.

Sanchez, who also owns a construction company, said some migrants who were skilled plaster finishers pulled up images of their work to show him on their phones.

“I got their number, I can’t wait,” Sanchez said.

The restaurant industry, like the hotel industry, took a beating during the pandemic and has struggled to fill jobs even as consumer demand has bounced back.

“A lot of people went to work construction, and they never came back,” Sanchez said. “People just moved on.”

Sanchez, who is also chair of governmental relations for the Illinois Restaurant Association, referenced the funding Chicago has allocated to help migrants. In May, the City Council approved $51 million for spending on migrant care, which mostly covered the expenses of agencies contracted to run city-run shelters, according to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s deputy chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas.

“If we would allow them to have work visas, the city of Chicago would not be spending that kind of money,” Sanchez said. “Allowing them to come in and not allowing them to work becomes a burden on the city, the state and the federal government. They don’t want to be a burden. They want to work. And we need workforce.”

Brayan Lozano, an asylum-seeker from Colombia, echoes the leaders’ plea. He’s been in the city for nearly three months. With the help of volunteers, he has found an apartment to rent, which he pays for with money he earns as a self-employed contractor.

“We come here to work, we want to contribute to society at the same time that we help our families,” Lozano said in Spanish.

“We don’t want to be a burden to the government,” he said.

Shelly Ruzicka, a workers’ rights advocate with Arise Chicago, said it is important for migrants to know they have the same rights as any other workers, regardless of their immigration status, whether working in factories, for companies or as day laborers.

Ruzicka urges migrants to keep written documents of the work agreement, including pay, type of labor and work. But even after submitting a complaint, getting their money back from wage theft does not happen immediately, if at all.

In his native country, Lozano worked as a social worker and human rights organizer, he said, which is why he sought asylum. In Chicago, he is also a key member of the volunteer network in the South Loop, looking out for fellow migrants and connecting them with resources.

He said he often communicates the possible negative consequences of working illegally, but also watches after those who take a job. Most share their locations with him, and he accompanies them to inspect the space. If he suspects exploitation or wage theft, he informs the volunteers and asks for guidance.

When the volunteer group learns of someone experiencing wage theft, they first talk to the employer and attempt to get their money. Other times, the only thing they can do is warn other migrants of the employers that could potentially exploit them.

Unfortunately, Livings said, “there is little to nothing we can do for them.”