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The architect of President Obama’s immigration policy told a Fair Haven audience to prepare for changes to take effect despite a Texas judge’s decision that has stalled an order to protect millions of undocumented immigrants.
Felicia Escobar, special assistant to the president for immigration policy, stopped by Fair Haven K‑8 School Monday to talk about the impact of the president’s order. The event was sponsored by The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. (She’s picted above at left next to Foudnation CEO Will Ginsberg.)
Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change and the events moderator Monday, called Escobar one of the “really fierce Latina women at the White House serving in key roles and pushing a progressive immigration agenda at the national level, and it is partly because of her that we have the president’s executive order.”
Escobar is no stranger to New Haven. She is a Yale University graduate and was a student activist who volunteered at Fair Haven School providing education to the community about HIV/AIDS. She played a lead staff role in crafting the executive order that Obama issued last November which established the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (also called the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, or DAPA).
The president’s order allows undocumented immigrants to apply for a renewable, three-year deportation deferral if they’ve been living in the U.S. for more than five years, have children who are U.S. citizens, and pass required background checks. The order also expands the population eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (also known as DACA) program that the president created in 2012, and extends the period of DACA and work authorization from two years to three.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who was on hand to welcome Escobar, called the president’s executive order “a welcome first step” in creating “a modern, humane immigration system for the future. We need to move forward [on immigration], not back.”
Escobar said that DAPA was created because of the many failed attempts to get Congress to pass a law that would reform a broken immigration system. After the president had a number of conversations with the leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress about the pain their inaction was causing local communities, “he decided that we could wait no longer for Congress to act,” she said.
Working with the new secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, leading experts in the federal government and gathering input from members of Congress and local community members, Escobar and the rest of Obama’s team was prepared for a potential court challenge, she said. So DAPA was created within the confines of existing law, and modeled after the 2012 DACA program with the expectation that it might be challenged in court. She characterized a Texas judge’s recent order to delay implementation of the plan as “a minor setback.”
“We believe the law is very much on our side,” she said. “We spent several months deciding whether we should do this because we wanted to be sure that it was something that was legal and would actually withstand a challenge. We continue to move forward because we know ultimately that we will be able to implement this because this is fully legal and the right thing to do.”
Doing The Right Thing
Economists estimate that providing temporary legal status to undocumented immigrants has the potential to pump between $1.5 billion and $3.7 billion into the country’s economy. Escobar’s advice to the people of New Haven: Get ready and save your money. Applicants will have to pay a fee as a part of the DAPA process when it is fully implemented.
While DAPA is in the hands of the courts, the DACA program is still very much in effect. Escobar said across the country it is benefiting about 600,000 people, including 5,000 people in Connecticut like Lucas Codognolla, who is from Brazil and is the lead coordinator for the activist group CT Students for a DREAM. Codognolla said prior to the creation of DACA his undocumented status made him afraid and ashamed.
“DACA changed my life,” he said. “It’s allowed me to get a job and to do something I really love doing. It’s allowed me to get a driver’s license.”
Activist John Jairo Lugo of Unidad Latina en Acción pointed out that the president’s executive order helps some, but it doesn’t go far enough and has no real benefits for undocumented workers who don’t have children. To prove his point, he had people who would be helped by the order, and those who would not be helped, to take turns standing. Though the numbers appeared small, the group of people who would not be helped was slightly larger. “You can see people who are members of the same family being affected,” he said.
Sandra Trevino, executive director of Junta for Progressive Action, said comprehensive immigration reform will be a collective effort and the president’s order is just one of many steps that must be taken to fix an “immigration system that is not working and hasn’t worked for many years.
“This is not one organization’s job, it’s not the responsibility of one person,” she said. “If we didn’t have advocates out there, this wouldn’t get done.”
The Community Foundation published a report in January called “Understanding the Impact of Immigration in Greater New Haven.”
The report documented the contributions of immigrants to the community,and sought to dispel myths and misperceptions of what the immigrant community looks like in the region. (Read about that report here and read the full report here.)
Community Foundation President and CEO Will Ginsberg Monday called immigrants “among our community’s greatest assets.” Though New Haven has seen very little increase in its native-born population, it has been the fastest growing city in Connecticut since 2000 thanks to immigration.
