Carlos Vargas did not hesitate when the opportunity presented itself in 2012 — a path to formalize his status as an American, a chance at a driver’s license, a work permit, and a social security number. The avenue was an executive order signed by President Obama, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that was intended to protect undocumented children brought to the U.S. at a young age from deportation, and to encourage their inclusion in civil society.
“I definitely didn’t think twice,” Carlos, who came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old, said of his decision to sign up.
Carlos threw himself into activism in the years that followed, ultimately landing a position working on a major New York City initiative, the largest of its kind in the country, to inform and educate immigrants about their rights. When the 2016 race for the presidency rolled around, Carlos, who is now 31, watched Donald Trump’s rise with alarm, but like many others, he believed Hillary Clinton would ultimately pull off the win.
On the night of the election, the Vargas family gathered at their home in Staten Island to watch the results come in. It was well after midnight, Carlos said, when the reality of what was playing out on the television began to sink in: that Donald Trump, a man who built much of his campaign around the racist scapegoating of immigrants, was going to take the White House.
“We just looked at each other like, ‘He won. This guy actually won. He’s going to be the next president of the United States,’” he recalled.
Through his job at Make the Road New York, a grassroots advocacy organization, Vargas is now spending his post-election days running know-your-rights trainings around the city, answering questions from immigrants fearing that their loved ones could soon be taken from them.
Carlos said more than 100 people showed up at his most recent training session, eager for information about how their lives could change. Most of their questions dealt with the prospect of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent knocking at their door. “What happens if ICE gets me and my children have no one?” some would ask. “Will I be able to bring my kids with me?” others would say. Carlos does his best to inform people and to avoid stoking panic, even as DACA, the program he and some 742,000 others signed up for, sits a pen stroke away from being repealed on Trump’s first day.
“We don’t want to inflict fear,” he said. “But they should be prepared.”
For many undocumented immigrants, and for the lawyers and organizations that advocate on their behalf, Trump’s election has cast a shadow of fear unlike anything in recent memory. It has prompted deep concerns that an already pernicious system of immigration enforcement and deportation will be ramped up, and that the next four years could see profound struggle and suffering in immigrant communities across the country.
“Let me just take a breath,” Alexandra M. Goncalves-Pena, an immigration attorney in New Jersey, said before laying out the array of threats that Trump’s vision poses to any possibility of a humane U.S. approach to immigration.
The fate of DACA is certainly up in the air, Goncalves-Pena said. She and other organizations have advised those who have not yet applied for the program to hold off. Concerns over what the incoming administration might do with personal information volunteered by immigrants have swirled since the election, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggesting that immigrant data maintained by the city could potentially be deleted if a Trump White House came looking for it.
For Goncalves-Pena, the fact that the safety of immigrants’ personal data is even being questioned is particularly painful. “When the DACA program started, people were so scared to sign up,” she recalled. “People were terrified” at the thought of outing themselves as undocumented to the federal government. “We were, as advocates, just trying to be supportive and encourage people to apply,” she explained. “I feel, personally, like I let people down.”
With Trump coming in and filling senior positions with infamous anti-immigrant, right-wing, and white supremacist figures along the way, the mission of immigrant rights advocates should be one of organization and collaboration, Goncalves-Pena said, in hopes of ensuring that vulnerable communities are not let down again. “There will be a battle,” she said. “This will be difficult. That is all too clear. But what we need to start doing now as attorneys, as advocates, is having that conversation.”
Any success that immigration rights advocates might achieve in pushing back on Trump’s agenda will require access to information. So far, that’s been an uphill battle. Despite centering immigration in his campaign rhetoric, details on precisely how Trump intends to achieve his objectives have been limited. The president-elect’s official website lays out a “ten-point plan to restore integrity to our immigration system” but elaborates on none of the proposals.
As a candidate, Trump proposed deporting as many as 11 million people, banning Muslims from coming to the U.S., forcing Mexico to build a multibillion-dollar border wall, and tripling the number of ICE agents. While Trump has shifted on some of his past proposals in recent weeks, for example claiming that he will initially focus deportation efforts on individuals with criminal records — an estimated 2 to 3 million people by his erroneous count — the particulars of exactly what he is going to do remains opaque.
“That uncertainty itself is unjust,” said Manny Vargas, the senior counsel and founder of the Immigrant Defense Project. “People just don’t know what the future is going to be.”
What is clear, Vargas explained, is that Trump will have at his disposal a number of already broadly written laws that could be used to target immigrants who have come into contact with the criminal justice system. Drug offenses, no matter how minor, can be used to trigger deportations, Vargas said. “It doesn’t even have to be a crime under the law of the convicting jurisdiction,” he explained. “If it’s a violation of the law or regulation relating to a controlled substance, it can make you deportable.” But it goes beyond that, Vargas pointed out. So-called crimes involving moral turpitude, which can include offenses as minor as turnstile-jumping, can be leveraged to support deportation cases.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize there aren’t these protections in the immigration system like there are in the criminal justice system,” Vargas said. “One has to keep all of this in mind when you hear the talk about deporting millions of folks with past criminal convictions. “
Despite the seemingly innumerable ways in which a determined prosecutor can argue for an individual’s deportation, Goncalves-Pena is quick to point out that immigrants have rights enshrined in the Constitution. “Due process does apply to immigrants,” she said. “That is where we attorneys that do this litigation day in and day out in immigration courts, as well as immigration advocates, we need to start thinking and having conversations together about the legal avenues to challenge certain policies, certain responses, certain attacks against our clients, on the communities that we love, in order to ensure that due process is respected.”
For Carlos, the delicate work of educating those deeply shaken communities goes on. “I’d like to say, ‘Oh, it’s fine, I’m not worried. I’m positive,’” he said. But the reality, he admitted, is that nobody knows what’s coming next. “We really don’t know how to prepare,” he said. “We feel like our hands are tied behind our backs.”
Top photo: Immigrant families and community members stand together during a press conference to speak about the Supreme Court oral arguments regarding the DACA/DAPA executive actions on April 13, 2016, in Miami, Florida.
Elections have consequences. I think President Obama said that.
As a 30 year union member, I have seen how illegals have depressed wages and taken jobs from U.S. citizens. My buddy was an electrician. He lost his business when contractors hired illegals to wire houses. My work partner worked in a union meat factory. The company fired the union men, and hired illegals. The dreamers are not Americans and should go back to their country of origin. There are not enough jobs for those born here. And the few new jobs that have been created since the crash of 2007 are minimum wage and part time.
The government supports them . . . how could an immigrant cross the border and know to find a way to IOWA for a job? Word of mouth might cover a small amount but it is too many and too far….
Construction is another – how do you hire a person who doesn’t speak a word of English?
E-Verify like most of what our government does sounds good – but isn’t used / and when it is used it is used against the workers not the employers – so nothing is done to stop them from coming…
With this election we talk voter suppression – but the government does the same with wages. De-regulation is FRAUD
What a great union guy you are, blaming the workers instead of the employer manipulating a lax immigration system to pay illegal wages
Refugees from Central America should be applying for refugee status in the first country they enter, which is Mexico. This is what international agreements require, rather than their traveling thousands of kilometres across Mexico, to claim it on the American side, then never showing up for their hearings. The reality is that the majority are not refugees as we normally understand the term, and if they are, it is first Mexico’s responsibility, rather than offloading it upon the beleaguered workers of the United States. Once here, of course they will be having “Dreamers” and after that it becomes impossible to maintain controlled and reasonable immigration that benefits both legal immigrants and American citizens.
“Once here, of course they will have become ‘Dreamers'” should have been the wording above, since this wasn’t referring to those with birthright citizenship as American law does provide, (colloquially, “anchor babies.”) However, it should be pointed out that few countries recognize birthright citizenship when both parents are illegal immigrants – both liberal Canada and Mexico do not.
Sorry, but this isn’t a “betrayal”. DACA was controversial from the start, and the government knew it was probably illegal. And, indeed, it has been declared so by two federal courts. Nonetheless, the Obama administration pushed forward with it anyway, despite specific promises made to the Court that it would not do so while the case was pending. (That promise was made to prevent the issuance of a temporary injunction; the judge took the government at its word, and we now know just how much that was worth.)
Reversing an illegal Executive Order isn’t a betrayal of anyone; the Order itself was a betrayal of the American people and the rule of law.
American people need to start considering the world at large and any efforts to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few by deporting the many will lead to war. To have so little respect for children shows the thick skin of the imperialist pig.
If you ever make it over the wall, remember this: NEVER voluntarily provide information to the federal government.
The people came here – not to be illegal, but for a better life. Leaving gang ridden neighborhoods where there is no safety. There is no easy answer. Our economic downturn is not helping our own citizens let alone immigrants. The LADY in the Harbor says they are welcome. If this were a time before N.A.F.T.A. I believe it would be easier for all concerned. WE are living with perpetual war – Bailouts and sell-outs….
our system is broken – – I do not think anyone can deny it. IT will not be fixed by scapegoating and throwing people under the bus / deporting them.
new law
IMMIGRANT SPONSORSHIP ACT
All persons having entered the US illegally shall be returned to their country of origin. All persons wishing to enter and reside in the US must have a US citizen sponsor who can guarantee to cover and pay for ANY and ALL damages caused, wholly or in part, by the sponsored immigrant.
Yes. Maybe they need to set up a GoFundMe for illegals, undocumented?
I have no issue with people trying to improve their lot in life. I’d probably do the same thing were I in their shoes. But they knew their actions were illegal, and they had to be prepared to face the consequences if they got caught. Sucks for them, I know, but life isn’t always fair. The US is right to enforce its immigration laws, and just because you’ve gotten away with something for years doesn’t (shouldn’t) mean that will always be the case.
Change this story around, and make it guns that are registered as opposed to illegal border crosser’s. And I doubt the author would have any issue with the gun owners being rounded up.
“We feel like our hands are tied behind our backs.”
-Carlos Vargas
Lol soon they will be all
Hail God King Trump!
First of all Trumps first priority to deport is illegal immigrants whom are a criminal threat. Next may be all those “undocumented” (aka ILLEGAL) immigrants. Who knows? His 72 year old mother should have pursued the proper route to come here. I have no sympathy for those that do not do it the right way.
They should all be legalized instead of scapegoated for everything. Obama failed massively in this area.
really?
i dont think you are seeing the trajectory here.
Understand compassion and humanity but i venture you and Reader and others do not sleep with their doors open, invite any and everyone to their home, give them money, pay their bills, and pick up any hitchhiker along the road. Get real.
This will be #1.
Are you promoting the legalization of the criminals in this group? Estimates vary as to how many are presently here, legal and illegal criminal immigrants but even the low estimate is about 800,000.
Seems to me that there really is a big difference between legal immigrants, who follow the process, frustrating and expensive as it sometimes is, and those who just decide to be smuggled into the country, breaking the law. Is there really an unlimited right to immigrate without following the law the way millions of others have done properly, and then having acted illegally claim the right to citizenship? Does the President have the constitutional right to create his own laws without Congress, because Congress hasn’t passed the ones he wanted?
Even Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers opposed uncontrolled illegal immigration, because it is used by employers to break the back of unions who have citizens and legal immigrants as members, while exploiting the illegal immigrants themselves as scab replacements during labor actions. Whenever donorists wanted to weaken worker rights, they would call Washington, and the Border Patrol would then stand by so that big agriculture got the replacement workers it wanted so it could fire union workers.
It’s not all that surprising that a President whose cabinet was chosen by Citibank, according to the emails published by WikiLeaks, would act in the interest of the powerful. Offering false hope by keeping people in a state of limbo, collecting information on them that can be used against them later and at the same time deporting over twice as many immigrants as the Bush administration did, is not only hypocritical but exploitative. The truth of the matter is, it is desired by elites to have a large cohort of workers who are vulnerable and easily exploited as they work for less and illegally, in order to keep wages and benefits of all citizen and legal immigrant workers lower, as has happened. And the truth is also that so-called Free Trade has allowed big Agribusiness to export food to Mexico and Latin America for less than indigenous farmers can produce it, driving people from their land, worsening the drug business as an alternative and producing the pressure for emigration from Mexico and Latin America northward.
Even Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers opposed uncontrolled illegal immigration, because it is used by employers to break the back of unions who have citizens and legal immigrants as members..
This will be #2, for those who float and cannot connect the dots.
The “Pres who chose Citibank for his Cabinet” was holding to the deal he made with CrookdClintons in 2008– she would step back from the potusa, she did not want vp but sos and he would listen to secret BigWS plans they had.
Like to call them the 3musketeers.
This would make PresBills Nafta look good– from here.
3#– DO YOU EVER STOP AND QUESTION WHY THIS IS HAPPENING?
It is the WS OpenBordersSecretSpeeches, the SOS clintonemail.com to talk to criminals, making ONE COMPLETE CIRCLE.
#4– you were DOUBLECROSSED TOO!
of course.
the population of mexicans in the US went from 3% to 20% in 40 years.
it’s an invasion of occupation for domination and control.
250 million more ready to raid America.
pure insanity.
This is a hit piece. Its filled with the author’s half truths, slants, and image-emotion evoking word twists. The author writes as if he wants to evoke empathy for those he writes about. He may, but its more important for him to twist the the truth for his own unknown gain. Writing beneath The Intercepts quality, and easily seen through. The author does no service to those he writes of, because he has ignored/twisted facts–a technique taught in Creative Writing 101.
And again the possibility of truthful journalism in the future takes another hit.
Evoking empathy for hardworking brown people from south of the border. The nerve!
I mean, it’s easy to feel bad for them. But breaking the law is breaking the law; they took that risk when they illegally snuck into America. They very much knew the risks and still attempted to have anchor babies in the hopes that America would treat them gently afterwards. It’s understandable when someone is willing to do anything for a better life for their children, but it doesn’t mean we should all just forget about it. Immigration rules exist for a reason, and it’s not just because “‘Murca!”
I come to The Intercept for the journalism, not opinion pieces. This piece is one where the author clearly had a motive and is trying to persuade instead of informing.
False cheap word sympathy brings us to #5– you get to live under the 3musketeersSECRETTPP and can immigrate south when you are beat, drained out and lose everything!
I have not given my opinion re illegal immigration.
I pointed out this is a lousy article. Thinking briefly about it last night, perhaps this started off as two articles: one with the author’s dislike for Trump apparent, to the point where the author lied and omitted facts, straw-manned, and on; then stuck into this original article the info concerning the family, and illegal immigrant resource counselors.’
IE, its a hit piece, and I doubt the authors motive were anything more than expressing his own personal angry bias. But as said, motives, unknown. And this type of article does not service that family’s best interests. Its very close to rabble rousing.
Also, if you don’t understand what issue is addressed in the comments, try asking a question, instead of assuming.
Illegal immigrants have no right other than the fundamental right to due process that ensures their deportation is handled smoothly. Thus, there’s no such thing as immigrant rights for illegals.
The Constitution covers everyone here.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/illegalrights.htm
(Oops.)
Suppose, by magic, all 11-25M illegal aliens suddenly left America. What would happen? First, there would be a low-skilled labor shortage. Legal Americans would at last have jobs. Low-skilled wages would rise. Low-skilled Americans could get off the dole and other forms of assistance. At last, after many years they would have some dignity. The public would not have to ridicule them for being on welfare.
It’s true, some things we buy would cost more. Of course a great deal of that increase would be mitigated by the lower demand for public services illegals require. The invisible cost we pay for illegal services would disappear. The 20% of Obama care that goes to cover illegals could be spent instead on legals. Some of the increase in cost would be mitigated because those people would pay taxes. Maybe with more money their kids could get a few breaks. Most of all, we would be giving this important part of America some dignity. Legal aliens could still come to America for agricultural purposes, but after they finish their work, the gotta go back.
It is really a pity that all these illegals came here for compelling reasons which America did not cause. But, if we must choose between helping them and abandoning the most vulnerable of our own citizens–America first.
I know it is hard to understand that “illegal” means “illegal.” It does not mean that of you look cute and pathetic, “illegal” means “legal.”
Yes, it is true that previous administrations have not cared to dal with this subject or do anything, but now that is over.
“the reality of what was playing out on the television began to sink in: that donald trump, a man who built much of his campaign around the racist scapegoating of immigrants”
I’m not a sexual predator, but it’s still quite useful for me to know why the war criminal coward organization that is the nsa sexually assaults me using no touch torture methods as a means of conning people into believing they don’t spy on sexual abuse and rape victims during their most private moments in order to control and horrify them under the guise of protecting the country or world.
Many of the rest of us will have the opportunity to feel betrayed when we go from having had health insurance to being unable to get it because of some preexisting condition or other.
(Trump claims he doesn’t want to get rid of that, but the logicians at NYT say that eliminating that inevitably leads to an Obamacare-like proposal because people would avoid signing up until they get very sick. The only real hope – and given Mitt Romney’s history, it might be real – is that they slap a “Trumpcare” logo on it and send it back the way it was, considering it no longer bad once it is their idea. But I doubt that highly)
i think you’re correct.
the rightmost just want the credit for it.
DT would be more satisfied with single payer.
Ddi you notice that this article was about illegal aliens, not insurance?
I was emphasizing the parallel. In order to get anything (even when it comes to private sector jobs, but in this case, from government), the lower classes have to give up privacy of some sort or other. The benefit is temporary, shorter even than they think, but the stigmatization based on every piece of information they have to give up is forever.
I don’t expect Mr. Trump to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants. They help to depress wages, particularly in the hotel/resort and construction industries, two of Mr. Trump’s main lines of business. He has previously said something about making money being ‘smart’, so I don’t expect him to do anything that would raise wages. He will content himself with a few, high profile deportation cases, just for the PR value, but will be careful not to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants so much that it affects his own profits.
Hardly a surprise there is this much controversy over immigration from Mexico.
There are powerful business interests that benefit from it on the one side, and a tacit understanding that most of the southwest was wrested from Mexico and should have remained Mexican on the other.
Under these circumstances, the social class that usually bears the brunt of the injustices of others is poised to get run over yet again. That class would be living on both sides of the border.
Yet another reason why Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept should have resisted the urge to undermine the Clinton campaign at every turn.
This article is written as if I should feel sorry for these people.
They have had how many years to go through the legal immigration process?
They don’t want to do it. They are at fault, not America.
Look. The reason they don’t is because the risks of doing so are different for each family member, which means that the risk of tearing the immediate family apart are very high. “Risk” is exactly the right word, unfortunately, because immigration law is highly politicized and unpredictable — more unpredictable than, say, going into debt for a professional degree on the theory that the job you’ll get will make it worth the money you’ve borrowed, or even the risk of refusing to plead guilty to a crime you did not commit and standing on your right to go to trial (that almost never works).
Laws are legitimate when those subjected to them have some idea of what is going to happen if they follow them, not only if they break them. I know someone who has returned to Mexico this past week to apply for reentry, even though their spouse is an American citizen and their only child is an American-born college student, and of course this person has a perfectly clean record apart from undocumented entry as a minor child. No one knows what will happen to them. How would you like it?
How would i like it, if i were in their shoes?
i would not.
Here is the problem.
I am in my shoes.
I do not want to exit my shoes and wear someone else’s shoes.
bottom line- i do not want to live in mexico, i do not want mexico to live in me.
ps – the racists in mexico city are doing the same thing as always, trying to dump their population overflow onto someone else. Mexican gov cannot take care of their own citizens so they invade America. They figure they can invade and occupy America just like israel invades and occupies Palestine. It’s the 21st century way to conquer other countries.
Here’s a question for you.
Why should the lawful spouse of an American citizen and parent of an only child, also an American citizen by that spouse, have to leave the country to regularize their status, when they never did anything illegal themselves? They were a baby, brought in by their parents. Their kid is 20 . . . er, the marriage is real.
Would you be just as hostile to a German family in this position? A Danish one?
1. marriage and citizenship have nothing to do with one another.
2. german asian danish, it really does not matter because the problem is economics and power
3. i am not hostile, i am resolute.
With respect to your first point, marriage to a US citizen does qualify an alien for citizenship.
Well it does qualify them for Permanent Residence, which after five years they can apply for citizenship. But such folks are not illegal immigrants and have to file all the proper paperwork.
I am currently living in another (as it happens Latin American) country. It is inconceivable to me that I should be permitted to jump their border and take up residency without a visa or other permission and have citizens of this country actually argue that it’s ok because I have formed relationships and therefore have some sort of moral claim to stay.
I am a guest in this country, whose citizens are entitled to operate it for their own benefit as they see fit. If they find me unfit for their country, that’s their decision alone to make.
This is true of every other nation on earth. It is only in the US that we have dim-wits who believe they have a privilege to give away something that is not theirs to give.
If families do not wish to be “torn apart”, they can all re-enter together wherever they came from. Problem solved.
Nowhere did I say that violating immigration laws is fine. That is not what I said, anywhere. I’ve lived in other countries, by the way, where I most certainly obeyed the laws applicable to me, while other Americans flouted them with bemusement and complete disdain. (No, I don’t mean Latin America. I mean Western Europe.)
Go back and read what I said calmly.
The reason people do not obey immigration laws is that outcomes of obeying them (or of disobeying them) are not predictable. This is fundamentally unfair.
Let’s take a simple analogy, one where very little is at stake. Consider a speed camera that malfunctions randomly. You speed, you get a ticket. You speed, you don’t get a ticket. You speed by 6 miles above the limit, you get a ticket for 26 miles above the limit. You do not speed, someone next to you cuts you off, endangers your child’s safety, and speeds. You get his ticket.
Now imagine that what’s at stake is much bigger, and affects your whole life and the lives of all the people you love.
That is life, we all face risk. He has an education and is certainly well ahead of many others.
Yes, we get that we try to live our life by ideals of perfection, but it never happens.
If families don’t want to get “torn apart”, they can all leave together. There aren’t yet any laws against emigration.
1,000,000 persons have illegally crossed into the US on average each year since 1975. They were impoverished. They don’t stop. There are 250,000,000 persons south of the border in poverty and each day every day every week month year they keep coming. If you want to put these persons in your rooms and your lawns, try it Crowd yourself up. What i build i want to keep and use and enjoy and maintain and pass on without dilution. I do not want these people in my country. If they are unhappy with their country, they should change their country, not invade and occupy mine to dominate and seek control and resources. Neither do i like that israel does the same to Palestine. Are we all Palestinians now?
When Clinton signed the NAFTA trade bill, 1 million farmers lost their jobs while the likes of Walmart, Con Agra, Archer Daniels Midland stormed into Mexico with cheap subsidized corn (paid for by you and me and all taxpayers) monopolizing the corn trade. I kind of feel sorry for those farmers and families. Hail NAFTA for creating this huge instability.
right. i believe the wallstreet thieves wanted to help monsanto hijack the good corn in mexico and replace it with the GMO CANCER MAKER and also to force people to pay pay pay for what God had never intended.
Maybe wallstreet will feed their own families with the deadly gmo.
If we don’t want people from other countries coming here as refugees or to better their lives because they are so impoverished, we should stop interfering in their countries and making them such miserable places to live. Just looking at Central America, every time one of their democratically elected leaders wanted to use the resources of his country to benefit his own people instead of American Corporate Overlords, The CIA or the army went in and overthrew him. We have had covert wars and secret coups and not so secret coups in almost every country. Hillary Clinton just did one in Honduras while she was Secretary of State, and we have no right to be sending the asylum seekers of that back to be killed. Our war on drugs has caused over 100,000 deaths in Mexico made parts of that country unlivable. El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, all U.S. victims. We have a moral responsibility to help the people whose lives we have destroyed with our meddling, and the mean-spirited comments about “following the law” and “they should have known better than to come here” are a stain on what our country is supposed to stand for. Were we following the law in Guatemala when we decided United Fruit had more right to pick the leader than the people of Guatemala did?n Who where we to decide whether the Sandinistas were too left wing to be allowed to win in a fair election in another country? Are we for democracy or not? There is way too much legalistic talk and too little moral consideration.
Also, no one mentioned, in all this talk of DACA why people who had been here since they were young children “deserved” to be sent back to war torn countries where in some instances they didn’t even speak the language or know anyone. They were children when they came. Why do they deserve to be punished? It wasn’t their decision, and they were raised as Americans. This is not the way true Americans behave. We should be ashamed.
We forget that our bureaucracies were created to serve the people, not make their lives harder. That should include all people. Immigrants are human beings too. My daughters are internationally adopted, and one of them was supposed to come into the country on a medical visa because she was very ill, had a doctor flying with her etc. This shouldn’t be complicated but… A medical visa is a B-2, and a business class visa is a B-1. Somebody typed the wrong number into the computer somewhere, at the embassy, at the airport in customs, I don’t know, but when I went to renew the visa they said no, a child can’t be here on business. No we can’t change it to a medical visa either. Oh, she’s adopted now? Good now you have to live with her for two years in another country to get entry permission. (We had had pre-approval from immigration for adoption.) We got all the way to a notice of deportation. An immigration lawyer we hired at the time said there was no way to fix it because immigration never fixed or admitted its’ mistakes as a matter of principal. Since leaving the country with her (she was a year old by now but I also had a four and a five year old) wasn’t an option, the lawyer arranged for her case to be “lost” until the two years were up and then petitioned for a green card and eventual citizenship for her. None of this should have been necessary.
Theoretically her citizenship was set before I ever left to get her with the pre-approval. Our government literally threatened to deport a baby and gave no legal way to resolve the problem.
Just as my daughter would have died if sent back, so will many of these deportees. America preaches human rights to the world. It’s time we demonstrated some.
Sorry it’s such a big bloc. It did have paragraphs, but they were deleted.
The context provided by Manny Vargas was enlightening.
Still, DACA was another Obama overreach of executive power which is being handed to Trump. When Trump can’t find 2 million undocumented in the field, he may settle for 742,000 documented undocumented.
Mr. Devereaux fails to make any distinction between immigrants and citizens. Any compassion I may have had for the people he is talking about is diminished by Mr. Devereaux’s utter contempt and disregard for the citizens of this country.
Deliberately slanting the news, misreporting the news and overtly lying in an alleged new story doesn’t do your cause any good. It makes things worse.
>>> CHILDHOOD IMMIGRANTS ONCE PROTECTED BY OBAMA’S PROGRAM NOW FACE BETRAYAL AND DEPORTATION <<<
Would the kids prefer being morphed into Podesta Pizzas?
check out pizzagate on Reddit. It's real, folks.
Spam. It’s real, folks.
https://sli.mg/a/gaffhM
Enjoy. Alefantis picks. Note his obsession with children, sex, and pizza.
Fyi… for all the naysayers….
The 3rd Highest Ranking officer in DC , too…
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/25/republicans_rush_to_defend_dennis_hastert_plead_court_for_leniency_in_pedophile_hush_money_case/
1 presidesnt
2 vice prez
3 speaker
Bill and Hillary, too…
Former #1 ranking officer… and #1 wannabe… and #4 sec of state Hillary
READ THE WHOLE PAGE FROM A BOOK.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pizzagate/comments/5deqjr/firsthand_account_of_what
_hillary_clinton_did_to/
THEN WATCH THE VIDEO: THE WHOLE THING… BUT, STARTING AT ~9 MINUTES. PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF of “two-faced”.
https://youtu.be/Laon3_ob54A
Clintons and their gang should be thrown into a cell with Charles Manson.
Reddit pizzagate is now down.
Why ?
DOJ took orders from Alefantis — owner of a pizza dive. He’s supposedly one of the top 50 “most powerful” people in DC? He hangs out in the White House.
Why? Blackmail? DOJ pressures reddit to shut down pizzagate.
FACT: Pedophile network is being protected in DC:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2012/09/19/to-catch-government-workers-with-ties-to-child-porn-call-the-irs/#3184b6d57b9d
Isn’t it nice to know that the Federal Government protects Jeffrey Dahmer types in DC???
He arrived at age 4, he is now 31. The federal government has failed to enforce the immigration laws for 27 years for this family.
When 1 in 20 workers is an illegal immigrant, it depresses wages for the entire working class. If we want our working class to earn living wages, we have to enforce the immigration and labor laws.
The longer we go without enforcing immigration laws, the harder it is to start. Still, it is the right thing to do.
“When 1 in 20 workers is an illegal immigrant, it depresses wages for the entire working class. If we want our working class to earn living wages, we have to enforce the immigration and labor laws.”
In what way? Diluting the workforce? Seems like the next step after immigration reform is population control then.
Let’s at least start by being honest about the very first line you’ve quoted. The very first line is true.
Undocumented immigrant worker depress wages for the same reason offshoring jobs depresses wages. Undocumented workers will work for less than minimum wage, for more hours and under worse conditions than prescribed by various labor laws, and will not complain when they are paid late or stiffed. They are easy to exploit because they have no recourse at all. They are tolerated because it is cheaper for their employers to pay off a law enforcement agent or two (or a politician) than it is to employ a solely documented workforce.
This does not tell us what we should do about this. If all of the undocumented were legalized to work in the US, and if we had a minimum wage that was worth at least as much in real dollars as it was in the late ’60s and an end to incentives to offshore, you would see far less depression of wages than exists under the current system.
But you would also see falling profit margins for the corporations, and we all know that plan is going nowhere. For now.
There would also be more unemployment. A minimum wage does not guarantee a job when there are too few to go around.
The labor laws should be enforced separately from the immigration laws, however, to remove the incentive for employers to encourage millions of illegal immigrants to come and be exploited. That would not require draconian and unAmerican policies like eVerify, which amounts to everyone getting permission from the government before the are allowed to have a job.
population control is the next thing
be prepared
look up OVERSHOOT DAY
I’d be interested to see how the treatment of illegal aliens by the U.S. compares to their treatment by other countries around the world. I know for a fact that Mexico treats illegal aliens very poorly, so it seems hypocritical for illegal aliens from Mexico to be complaining about their potential treatment when they’ve broken U.S. law.
… it’d only be hypocritical if the people complaining on our side of the border used to be in whatever the Mexico equivalent of ICE is. Your metaphor only works if you make the extreme logical leap of assuming literally every Mexican is the same person.
grupo beta
If they feel betrayed, the fault lies with Obama, who chose to issue execuitve orders rather than build consensus and pass legislation. Not just in this situation, but across the board, execuitve orders undermine the idea that we are a nation of laws.