Education Week - January 17, 2018 - 11

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that the African nations are "shithole
countries"-drew international backlash and cast a new round of doubts
about striking a DACA deal.
Three former homeland security
secretaries have warned congressional leaders and officials that they
don't actually have until the Trump
administration's March deadline to
take legislative action. The group
warned that the window to protect
undocumented immigrants will actually close this week.
"It is just becoming a very anxious
time," said Viridiana Carrizales, the
managing director of DACA member support at Teach For America.
The immigrants affected by DACA
were brought to the United States
illegally as children. And millions of
U.S.-born students in the nation's
schools are the children of undocumented immigrants, many of whom
aren't protected by DACA and are at
risk for deportation.
How many K-12 jobs hinge on a
DACA deal remains unclear, but the
potential impact on schools is significant. The Migration Policy Institute
estimates that a quarter-million students have become DACA-eligible
since President Barack Obama began
the program in 2012 and that about
9,000 undocumented, DACA-protected teachers work in U.S. schools.
Teach For America began hiring
the so-called "DACA-mented" teachers in 2013, and nearly 200 undocumented corps members and alumni
have taught in K-12 schools, reaching
tens of thousands of students.
But if DACA is repealed without
a replacement, roughly 40 of those
teachers could be out of work come
April. From there, the clock would
start ticking on other work permits.
With two months before the Trump
administration sunsets DACA, observers say there's still no clear-cut
path to a legislative solution.

Finding a Fix
Immigration policy in general has
confounded lawmakers for decades,
even without a pending deadline on a
decision that could directly and suddenly affect the lives of so many.
"Congress has repeatedly tried to
reform our immigration system ...
and they've repeatedly failed to do so.
It's kind of a bleak picture in that respect," said Sarah Pierce, an associate
policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. "On the more optimistic
side, I don't think any immigrationrelated issues have gotten as much
attention as this one. There seems to
be a huge push on both sides of the
aisle to resolve this issue."
The best shot at resolution may be
the Dream Act, a bill sponsored by
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina.
Their legislation would turn DACA
into a formal legal program and offer
those individuals an opportunity to
become United States citizens over
time. The Congressional Budget Of-

fice estimates the bill could grant
lawful immigration status and work
authorization to as many as 2 million
people-a sizable portion of the nation's immigrant population. The Pew
Research Center estimates that there
were 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States in
2015.
Lawmakers in both chambers
are immersed in negotiations, with
Durbin and Graham leading bipartisan talks in the Senate. But a
solution can't come fast enough for
DACA recipients: Nearly 15,000
have already lost DACA protection
since Trump announced plans to end
the program.
The decision could also affect the
lives of children born in the United
States: the millions of students in the
nation's public and private schools
who are the children of undocumented immigrants. With deported
or detained parents, many of those
students could have their educations
placed on hold.
"It goes beyond the [DACA] recipients. The sense of uncertainty is
certainly just as alarming and disquieting as if there was a firm understanding of what was going to happen," said Julie Sugarman, a policy
analyst at the Migration Policy Institute's National Center on Immigrant
Integration Policy.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Dreamers' Futures
Hang in the Balance

Supporters rally in Washington last month to urge Congress to approve legislation that would give so-called
Dreamers-immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children-permanent legal status.

walking out their front door and
going to school."
Since DACA went into effect in
2012, roughly 800,000 people were
protected by the program, and close
to 700,000 had active DACA protections in September, when the Trump
administration announced its end.
Trump repeatedly pledged to repeal
DACA during the 2016 presidential
campaign. After he left it untouched
during the first half of the year, a
group of Republican-led states threatened to challenge the program in the
courts before a judge who had already
blocked an expansion of DACA to include the parents of those individuals.
In response, the Trump administra-

tion terminated the program. The
president called on Congress to find
a legislative solution, while praising
DACA recipients as "good, educated
and accomplished young people."
But Trump and his GOP allies
have demanded that any bill to make
DACA permanent be paired with border security and other measures to
deter illegal immigration, even pushing for several elements, including a
reduction in family-based migration,
that Democrats have said are nonnegotiable.
"A big sticking point in this whole
debate is where the president lies
on this issue," said Pierce, the Migration Policy Institute analyst. "It's

been hard for people to gauge what
the White House is going to require
in order to agree to a deal. That's
definitely thrown a wrench into the
whole negotiation process."
As the discussions continue in
Congress, educators and families are
bracing for the unknown.
"As educators, we don't exist to get
involved in policy issues," said Ewing,
the Las Cruces superintendent. "But
we're going to have a group of people
who were educated here, raised here,
who are culturally and linguistically
American, yet they lack that one piece
of paper. To be told that there's not a
place for them, that's not an American
value."

Status for Salvadorans to End
In another immigration decision,
the Trump administration also decided this month to end temporary
legal status for an estimated 200,000
people from El Salvador, some of
whom have been living in the United
States since 2001.
The decision means that Salvadoran immigrants who have Temporary Protected Status, a program
that allows immigrants from countries in crisis to live and work in the
United States legally, must return to
the Central American nation by September 2019 or be subject to deportation. Officials in El Salvador estimate
the decision could separate almost
200,000 U.S. born children from their
Salvadoran parents.
The threat of deportation has hit
home in cities large and small, including border communities.
Greg Ewing, the superintendent of
schools in Las Cruces, N.M., was in
Washington last month to relay stories to members of the Congressional
Hispanic Caucus about how rampedup immigration enforcement has upended life for families. He described
days where upwards of 20 percent
of children in the 12,000-student
district stayed home from school as
reports of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement raids spread. Many of
the students were elementary-age
children who depended on their parents to get to school.
"What's most appalling is that
these students are American citizens,
and yet they are fearful about their
future and future of their parents,"
Ewing said he told the members of
Congress. "They have a fear of even

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Education Week - January 17, 2018

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