Dreamers lack confidence in Congress, plan for life without DACA

José Patiño has done everything right, keeping within the many lines of federal bureaucracy involved with being a part of the Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals program. But now, he is scrambling to come up with plans A, B, and C in case Congress does not come through with a plan to replace the program.

“There is hope for legislation to pass, but at the same time, nothing is certain,” Patiño, 28, said. “So, I have to prepare for the worst and keep fighting. Something could happen, but with the way Congress works, it most likely won’t.”

He was brought to Arizona from Mexico when he was 6. He has since earned his master’s degree in secondary education and bought a house. He now works as a mortgage banker and volunteers as the campaign director for local immigrant rights group Aliento.

Some of his mortgage clients are DACA recipients. He said some backed out after President Trump’s announcement September 5 that Congress has six months to fix the program or it will phase out.

Patiño said those people want to save money in case their lives are uprooted six months from now.

Patiño has been busy this week coming up with a contingency plan of his own. He said he’ll add his brother, also protected by DACA, to the title on his house, and he has been speaking with an attorney about migrating to Canada.

Returning to Mexico is an option, but not one that feels particularly comfortable.

He visited once while on advance parole, an element of DACA that allowed recipients to travel abroad and return to the U.S. without terminating their status, but it was “awkward.”

“They say that’s your home or that’s where you belong, but it felt like a foreign land,” he said.

He commended the outpouring of public support for legislators to act on the DREAM Act, a bill granting permanent legal status to people like DACA recipients, but said it is not enough.

Patiño said he has lobbied for the legislation originally co-authored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and heralded by Republicans, including Sen. John McCain. But he also predicted yet another false start on the attempt at immigration reform.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, has fought for life for 16 years.

In 2007, it fell to a bipartisan filibuster even after winning the favor of a majority of senators. In 2010, it won over the House but fell in the Senate. And in 2013, it was approved by the Senate but failed in the House.

Now, as officials take another stab, this time faced with a hard deadline for action, the fates of nearly 1 million people are at stake and a president who once promised to scrap DACA on day one of his administration.

In a statement released September 5, McCain said Trump’s decision was the “wrong approach to immigration policy at a time when both sides of the aisle need to come together to reform our broken immigration system and secure the border.” He also called on his colleagues to “devise and pass” such reforms, including the DREAM Act.

His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the senator’s confidence in his colleagues to do just that.

And Republican Sen. Jeff Flake’s spokesman, Jason Samuels, simply referred to a teleconference with members of the Arizona press held on September 6.

Flake, who also voiced his support for the DREAM Act, was asked what made him think such an effort would be successful considering the recent failure to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

“We’ve got momentum,” he said. “There are 800,000 kids that are currently protected by DACA… That’s a great motivator.

“They are contributing to society. They are going to school. Most of them are working…and so, it would be a blow to our economy if we were to lose them. They are valued members of society, and I hope they can stay.”

Flake said he thinks Congress can act within six months despite the long, failed history of the DREAM Act.

“I’ll take it comprehensive. I’ll take it piecemeal,” Flake said.

Whatever form a policy takes, if it materializes at all, lives hang in the balance.

Patiño said he is privileged, confident he has a network that will be there to protect him if Congress will not.

But other DACA recipients have only just begun to build their lives.

Jonas Lopez Pena, a sophomore at South Mountain High School, said he has no idea how to plan for his uncertain future.

“I rely on DACA, and without it, I’m pretty much nothing here in the United States,” he said. “I need it to be able to have a good life.”

On the same day DACA was slated for termination, Lopez Pena walked out of school with about 300 of his peers to protest Trump’s decision. He marched more than a mile to the Phoenix Police Department’s South Mountain Precinct surrounded by chants — “Whose streets? Our streets.” – and honking cars.

He had plans to go to college and took dual enrollment classes to earn credits in high school, but that has been turned upside down.

He said his three siblings are also protected by DACA. His parents are undocumented, though, and if their children are deported, Lopez Pena has no doubt they would leave everything behind and return to Mexico.

“We wouldn’t have the lifestyle we have here. I wouldn’t have the opportunities I have here,” he said. “Everything would change.”

DACA was created via an executive order from former President Barack Obama in 2012 to protect young undocumented immigrants raised in the U.S. from deportation. The so-called Dreamers were granted two-year protective terms that could be renewed.

Recipients will become eligible for deportation in March if Congress takes no action.