WASHINGTON — Isaac Cuevas and two young “Dreamers” — immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children by their parents — kept checking the news about the showdown on Capitol Hill in between presentations to seminarians for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

They were hoping lawmakers would come together in a deal that would fund the federal government and make permanent the legal protections that would end with the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program.

Then the news made it clear: no deal. The government had shut down.

“They felt let down,” Cuevas, the associate director of immigration affairs in the archdiocese’s government and community relations office, told the Register. Once again, the hope of being “one step closer” to being recognized citizens of the country they grew up in, and not to be deported to their country of birth, seemed caught in a partisan impasse.

“Whether it is 10 people, a hundred people or 100,000, these are lives of people that have grown up here and in their core feel that they are American,” Cuevas said. “They contribute to this country, they love this country, and their cultural upbringing is this country. They feel American.”

After the government shutdown of 69 hours ended the afternoon of Jan. 22, Republicans and Democrats agreed upon a stopgap measure to keep funding federal government operations until Feb. 8, in order to debate legislative proposals that would address the plight of approximately 700,000 DACA recipients.

President Donald Trump’s administration decided Sept. 5, 2017, to end the 2012 executive policy known as “DACA,” which had afforded certain people the opportunity to receive a two-year renewable protection from deportation and the ability to obtain work or go to school. The administration said it would no longer renew protections after March 5, 2018, making those who lose DACA’s legal protections eligible for deportation.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) denounced the Trump administration’s decision when it was released, saying the potential mass deportation of more than 700,000 people, who came to the country through no fault of their own, would be a “national tragedy and a moral challenge to every conscience.”

Immediately after the Jan. 22 deal was reached to fund the government temporarily, achieving a bipartisan consensus on DACA recipients seemed farther away than it had been before the shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that $1.6 billion in funding to build Trump’s border wall was now “off the table,” while the White House denied that Schumer even offered such a compromise in exchange for a legislative fix on DACA. Republicans favorable to a deal on DACA, such as Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., had been trying to strike a deal where increased border-security funding could be leveraged in exchange for Republican votes to enshrine DACA into law.

Trump swiftly fired back at Schumer, declaring on Twitter that “if there is no Wall, there is no DACA. We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!”

Ashley Feasley, the director of policy at the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services, told the Register that the political dynamics are “very fluid” over DACA, with lots of negotiations in the House and Senate taking place.

“The bishops want a solution to this,” said Feasley. She added that the U.S. Church’s shepherds are already dealing with family breakup due to “Dreamers” being picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers for deportation to their country of birth, as their legal protections expire.

 

Legislative Options

The principles outlined in the “Dream Act,” a bipartisan legislative proposal from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., seems compatible with the U.S. bishops’ own principles on immigration, explained Feasley. However, she said no language has been released yet for them to examine more closely.

Another bill that has support in the House by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would provide legal protection to DACA recipients who still have work permits, but would not allow them to obtain green cards or become citizens unless sponsored by an employer. Among the bill’s many other provisions, these recipients would not be able to sponsor their family members for citizenship.

But the bill has no bipartisan support in the House and has little chance of being taken up successfully in the Senate.

Another bipartisan bill in the House is the “USA Act,” by Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., who say their bill will legalize DACA recipients and secure the border by 2020, but also dedicate money to addressing the root causes of migration from Central America.

Feasley explained the bishops value border security because Catholic social teaching also recognizes the importance of border security and the right of a nation to control its borders as part of the care for the common good. But she said the Goodlatte bill is a non-starter for the bishops since it lacks a path to citizenship, which is necessary for full civic participation in American life, and bars chain migration, which would sunder legal migrants from their family members. Chain migration is the visa process whereby an immigrant citizen sponsors his or her other family members for citizenship. The Church supports family immigration and family reunification, also called chain migration, in order to keep families intact.

However, Andrew Arthur, a policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank with a restrictive approach to migration, believed the Goodlatte legislation was “a good proposal and made sense.”

“Some form of permanent status for these individuals is not out of order,” said Arthur, a Catholic.

Arthur said a deal on DACA should include requiring employers to use e-Verify to check the legal status of employees, ensure a uniform immigration policy by prohibiting “sanctuary cities,” where local authorities do not cooperate with ICE officers on federal immigration enforcement, and end chain migration. Arthur said the average immigrant has 3.5 family members: Allowing 700,000 DACA recipients to sponsor their family members, he said, would lead to citizenship for approximately 2.5 million people.

He also added that lawmakers should not rush to find a solution on DACA in the next three weeks.

“House and Senate Republicans should not negotiate with a gun to their heads over important matters such as this,” Arthur said.

 

Keeping DACA Separate

The political polarization surrounding the fate of those affected — even as polls show nearly nine out of 10 Americans favor providing them legal protections — is alarming to the U.S. bishops. Feasley said the bishops are trying to provide a “nonpolitical voice in calls for a solution,” but are concerned that lawmakers on Capitol Hill really do not see this as an urgent priority.

Catholic leaders, such as Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, have called for a clean legislative solution, saying the lives of DACA recipients “hang in the balance of these debates.”

“[W]e need a total reform of our immigration system, and it should not be tied to the current debate over DACA and the ‘Dreamers,’” the archbishop wrote in a Jan. 9 column for Angelus News. “As a nation, we have a moral and humanitarian obligation to the ‘Dreamers.’ These young people have done nothing wrong.”

Approximately a quarter of U.S. DACA recipients live in California, and approximately 125,000 are estimated to live within the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

The failure of DACA could usher in a pastoral nightmare for the Catholic Church. The archdiocese’s Cuevas explained the Church faces the breakup of nearly 700,000 family units if DACA recipients are deported by the program’s end in 2020.   

“It is going to be a huge hit on everybody,” he said.

Cuevas explained that receiving countries are not equipped to handle the infusion of so many youths who are culturally foreigners to the land of their birth. Given the violent instability of many of these countries DACA youths are not prepared to navigate, Cuevas said lives could be at serious risk. The U.S. government has no transition program in place that he knows of.

He said, “As soon as they touch foreign soil, they are on their own.”

Peter Jesserer Smith is a Register staff writer.