• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Saturday, February 4, 2023
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home National

Rescinding DACA: The Children Are Watching

Stephanie Canizales by Stephanie Canizales
09/09/17
in National, Opinion
DACA, children, Trump

Rescinding DACA, an insufficient yet still significant legal protection for unauthorized immigrant youth, the US jeapordizes some 1 million young lives at home. (Installation by JR, originally available at: https://www.instagram.com/JR/)

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Attorney General Jeff Sessions espoused various claims to back the rescindment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) last week. Among them was that the two-year reprieve from deportation and work permit, “among other things contributed to a surge of minors at the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences.” This is a longstanding misrepresentation and it willfully ignores the more relevant Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act brought into law under a republican administration in 2008, which protects migrant children from any countries other than Mexico and Canada who enter the US alone from deportation.

Conflating long-settled ‘Dreamers’ with children of the 2014 minor migrant border crisis decontextualizes the very different experiences that have brought these two groups of immigrant youth to the US. DACA-qualifying youth tend to be high-achieving students, unknowingly brought to the US by their parents, and who have participated in schools and local communities in traditional enough ways to allow feelings of indistinguishability from their US-born peers. Conversely, the unaccompanied migrant youth of the 2014 surge left their homes fleeing extreme violence and poverty. The persistence of home country conditions, rather than rumors of a 2-year deportation reprieve and work permit, will sustain unaccompanied minor migration.

While the reasons for migration and conditions of arrival vastly differ, my research with long-settled, undocumented young adults, now aged 18 to 31, who arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors between the ages of 11 and 17, provides a window into how the absence of legal protection for immigrant youth can converge the outcomes of these two groups to experiences of exploitation, poverty, and marginality in US society as they come of age.

Linked fates

Since 2012, I have conducted in-depth research with hundreds of undocumented Central American and Mexican youth and young adults who arrived in the US as unaccompanied minors. These young people crossed the southern border undetected and without a parent to receive them in the US. They entered the workforce as minors, taking up jobs in manufacturing, domestic or janitorial work, and in restaurants or distribution warehouses to survive in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York.

I have written extensively on the conditions that plague the workplaces that undocumented, unaccompanied youth workers occupy. In the downtown Los Angeles garment industry, this includes sewing and pressing clothes over hot and boisterous machinery on dimly lit factory floors with little ventilation. Workers are denied the right to stamp their own timecards as to keep private the gross underpayment of overtime work. Lunch hours turn to minutes during peak production seasons. Garment working youth can make between $85 and $430 for over 60 hours of labor per week. In various downtown Los Angeles restaurants, likewise, unaccompanied youth wash dishes and prep meals for less than $6 per hour for up to 10 hours per day. Unaccompanied minors’ wage theft cases can run as high as $8000 withheld in a one-year time span. Undocumented immigrants employed under these conditions report physical injury, aches and pains throughout their bodies, migraines from anxiety and stress, depression, and hopelessness for the future.

Many of the children of the 2014 surge of unaccompanied minor migration are too young to work or have a designated sponsor that is responsible to ensuring full-time school enrollment rather than employment to secure the success of their asylum cases. They can anticipate joining the workforce in the years to come.

On the other hand, one of the primary benefits of DACA is the provision of a work permit that grants immigrant youth access to upwardly mobile occupations, protects workers’ rights, and holds employers accountable to fair schedules and wages. A survey of DACA recipients reported that nine tenths of respondents had jobs—of which 56% of respondents reported better work conditions and 69% reported an increase in income. Another 72% of those surveyed were enrolled in institutions of higher education.

One million lives at risk

About 800,000 undocumented immigrant youth are recipients of DACA—approaching the 1.2 million that were projected to qualify for DACA at its launch. Since 2013, nearly 113,000 unaccompanied children have been placed with sponsors throughout the US. Unknown still is the number of unaccompanied youth who crossed the southern border undetected but who are active in work, schools, and their communities throughout the country.

This is to say, there are at least some 1 million undocumented youth and young-adults who are living in insecurity. Removing legal protections for immigrant youth and young-adult workers, risks further increasing the exploitation of immigrants in the workplace, as well as poverty and marginality in their communities.

Granted, DACA was by no means the remedy to the absence of immigration reform policies. A select group of youths, excluding unaccompanied minors of 2014 and on, qualified for the program, which contains specific time of arrival, length of stay, and education qualifications. Indeed, unaccompanied minors are deported to their home countries as this debate plays out. What the rescindment of DACA, however, does is place these two groups— one of which showed promise of positive integration— on an equally vulnerable playing field.

We can anticipate “terrible humanitarian consequences” in the months and years to come at the hands of a failed immigration system, absence of an immigrant integration policy, and an administration that continues to withdraw social safety nets. The Trump administration should evaluate what is at stake for multiple segments of the child migrant population in rescinding one of the few opportunities this nation grants undocumented immigrants to live in the US lawfully.

Immigrant rights advocates—policy makers, scholars, researchers, activists and organizers— at local levels and outside of government should continue to support one another. The children are watching.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
ShareTweet
Stephanie Canizales

Stephanie Canizales

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of California at Merced

Related Posts

People holding up banners to defend DACA.
Featured

DACA’s Return and the Need for Action From Incoming Biden-Harris Administration

by Alessandra Bazo Vienrich
December 16, 2020
A woman holds a sign during a rally to mark Juneteenth on June 19, 2020, in San Francisco
Opinion

India’s Caste System Is Criticized but America’s Class System Is No Better

by Priya Harindranathan
August 21, 2020
harvard
National

ICE: International Students Must Leave US If Their Schools Are Fully Online This Fall

by Lillian Andemicael
July 8, 2020
US President Donald Trump
Opinion

Halting Immigration: Trump’s Latest Try to Deflect Virus Mismanagement

by Wayne A. Cornelius
April 30, 2020
Anti-immigration protesters in Slovakia
Featured

What is Causing the Rise of Today’s Global Far Right?

by Bryan Bowman
December 4, 2019
Central American migrants climb the border fence between Mexico and the United States, near El Chaparral border crossing, in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico
Featured

US Migrant Protection Protocols Fuel Kidnappings in Mexico

by Sam Fouad
November 28, 2019
Next Post
trump erdogan caglayan

Erdogan Slams U.S. Over Iran Probe Before Talking To Trump

Work With Us

Recommended

Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
A supporter of nurses' strike and NHS holds a placard

UK Faces Fresh Mass Strikes as Wage Talks Derail

February 1, 2023
Israeli security forces in Jerusalem

Palestinian Gunman Kills 7 in East Jerusalem Synagogue Attack

January 30, 2023
The Doomsday Clock reads 100 seconds to midnight, a decision made by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, during an announcement at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on January 23, 2020

‘Doomsday Clock’ Moves Closest Ever to Midnight

January 25, 2023
Police work near the scene of a mass shooting in Monterey Park, California

California Lunar New Year Mass Shooter Dead, Motive Unclear: Police

January 23, 2023
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern

Race on To Replace Ardern as New Zealand Prime Minister

January 20, 2023

Opinion

Protesters rally against the fatal police assault of Tyre Nichols, outside of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit, Michigan, on January 27, 2023

How Do Violent ‘Monsters’ Take Root?

February 3, 2023
George Santos from the 3rd Congressional district of New York

George Santos for Speaker!

January 16, 2023
Commuters waiting for buses in Metro Manila. Philippines

Eight Billion and Counting…

November 29, 2022
Mahsa Amini protests

Imagining a Free Iran

October 24, 2022
Vladimir Putin

How 18th Century International Law Clarifies the Situation in Ukraine

September 29, 2022
Vladimir Putin

Falling for Putin

September 15, 2022
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post