Children caught in the immigration crossfire
By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY
On the phone, Fiorella Maza comes across as a typical American teenager. Her English is unaccented. Her best friend's name is Brittney. Her three most prized possessions are her wallet, her cellphone and, of course, her iPod.
Those were the necessities Maza, 19, took when immigration agents arrived at 6 a.m. on March 1 to deport her and her family.
The 2006 South Miami Senior High graduate and her parents now live in her grandmother's house in Lima, Peru — more than 2,600 miles from the place she had called home since she was 2. She's searching for language classes "because my Spanish is really bad," and trying to adjust to life in a land where, she says, "I feel like an outcast."
Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants' children could suffer the same fate, according to the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. They are the lost generation of an underground economy: Brought here illegally by parents, they grew up in American neighborhoods, attended American schools and made American friends. As they approach adulthood, most find that their illegal status is a barrier to jobs and education, and their lack of documentation puts them in line for deportation.
Now, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is pushing a plan that would give them a way to stay here and become Americans. The measure is triggering another bitter debate over how the nation should deal with its growing shadow population.
"The letters and e-mails I get from these young people are just heartbreaking," says Durbin, the No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate. "They have nowhere to turn. They are without a country."
In all but 10 states, students who are not legal residents cannot qualify for in-state college tuition or student loans. They have no right to work. And there's the dread of a knock on the door such as the one that sent Maza's family packing.
It's unclear how many of the 185,431 immigrants removed from the country last year were children who had grown up here. The Department of Homeland Security does not track such statistics, spokeswoman Kelly Nantel says.
The Migration Policy Institute, however, estimates that there are 360,000 high school graduates in the USA illegally who would be eligible for conditional legal status under Durbin's bill for the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors — or the DREAM Act, as proponents call it. Another 715,000 younger students could qualify if they graduate high school.
"They talk like Americans; they think like Americans," says Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando, speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "We ought to let them dream like Americans."
Durbin's bill would carve an exemption in the nation's immigration policy for undocumented immigrants who grew up in the USA.
It would protect students from deportation and qualify young adults up to age 30 for permanent legal status if they complete high school and at least two years of either post-secondary education or two years of military service.
It's one of several pieces of a sweeping proposed overhaul of the nation's immigration laws that proponents are trying to revive this fall, following the larger bill's collapse earlier this year.
The other measures, which would allow more foreign workers, have the backing of the agricultural industry and technology companies. The DREAM Act's backers have a different kind of political clout.
The Catholic bishops are among several religious groups lobbying for the bill. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate support it. So do senior Republican senators such as Arizona's John McCain and Indiana's Richard Lugar, as well as the nation's largest teachers union.
Even so, the act's passage is far from certain. Many of the groups that torpedoed the immigration bill by arguing it provided amnesty to lawbreakers are targeting the DREAM Act as a backdoor attempt to accomplish the same goal.
"It really is an amnesty plan disguised as an education initiative," says Bob Dane of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group lobbying to reduce legal and illegal immigration.
Dane says the bill will "encourage illegal behavior" and force Americans to compete with illegal residents for college slots and scholarships.
The bill's opponents aren't out to punish kids, Dane says: "We're merely not rewarding them for the illegal actions of their parents."
Such distinctions are lost on many of those caught in the middle of the debate. "I just want to return home where I belong," Maza writes in an e-mail.
Families split by deportation
"I'm living in limbo," says Marie Gonzalez, 21, a junior at Westminster College in Missouri.
Gonzalez, a political science major, has lived in Missouri — "Jeff City," she says, using the nickname for Jefferson City — since she was 5. She learned in 2002 she wasn't here legally when an anonymous tipster reported her father. At the time, he was working as a courier in the office of then-Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat. Gonzalez was a sophomore in high school.
"I was scared people were going to turn their backs on us," she recalls. "We were the people they talk about on TV."
Instead, neighbors in Gonzalez's conservative community rallied around her family.
It wasn't enough to save her parents, who were deported to Costa Rica in 2005. Then 19, Gonzalez had to sell the family home and cars. She hasn't seen her parents since, because a visit would mean not being able to return.
At Durbin's request, the Department of Homeland Security twice deferred Gonzalez's deportation. However, she says that DHS officials have warned her that if the DREAM Act doesn't pass, she will be deported to Costa Rica in June.
A deportation deadline also looms for Juan Gomez, 18, and brother Alex, 20.
Earlier this summer, the two, both students at Miami Dade College in Florida, spent a week wearing orange jumpsuits at the Broward County detention center. Their crime: having arrived here at age 2 and 4, respectively, with their parents from Colombia. Their parents are to be deported this month.
In handcuffs on the ride to the detention center, Juan used his cellphone to send a text message to a friend. The result was the creation of a Facebook group that rallied more than 3,000 supporters to lobby Congress on the boys' behalf.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida, and Sen. Chris Dodd, a Democratic presidential candidate from Connecticut, introduced what is known as a "private bill," used to help individuals with immigration problems.
That move gave the brothers two more years in the USA — a courtesy extended by immigration officials to allow Congress time to consider the legislation.
"It just shows you what a democratic country we are," says Juan Gomez. "This is the country I've always considered home."
For the Gomez brothers to be able to stay, however, the DREAM Act will have to pass. Diaz-Balart says it's highly unlikely Congress will approve a private bill for the brothers because there are too many similar cases.
"We continually run into kids who are in this country because of their parents' choice," he says. Some have younger siblings who are legal. The Constitution says anyone born in the USA is automatically a citizen.
Barriers to legislation
The DREAM Act is one of several pieces of the failed immigration bill now in play in Congress.
Other measures that could be part of a year-end immigration deal: one to permit more foreign farm workers to live in the USA, and another to grant more visas for temporary workers in business ranging from high technology to restaurants.
By one measure, the DREAM Act would seem the least controversial of the three: When the Senate Judiciary Committee considered it in 2003, the vote in favor was 16-3.
The opposition this year is enough to raise doubts about whether it or any piece of the immigration act can become law in the current Congress.
"I just don't think the political wherewithal is there to do it," says Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., the party's national chairman.
He supported the immigration overhaul but isn't sure he'll back relief for illegal immigrant children as a separate issue.
And though Martinez says it hasn't affected his stance, he says he received "a flood of letters and phone calls" opposing the DREAM Act when Durbin tried to add it to the defense authorization bill last month.
FAIR representatives made 24 appearances on radio talk shows over two weeks in September to oppose the DREAM Act, Dane says.
NumbersUSA, another group that favors clamping down on legal and illegal immigration, urged people on its website to call senators thought to be in favor of the bill. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., threatened a filibuster.
That persuaded Durbin and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to drop their effort temporarily. They say they'll try again to pass the DREAM Act before Thanksgiving.
Responds Dane: "We intend to keep the heat up."
Without the DREAM Act, Tam Tran, 24, is a person without a country.
The daughter of Vietnamese boat people, Tran was born in Germany, where her parents ended up after the German Navy plucked them out of the sea. The family moved to the USA when Tran was 6.
When her parents lost their political asylum case, immigration authorities tried to deport the family to Germany, Tran says. However, the Germans refused to take them.
For now, Tran is permitted to stay — only because the United States has no repatriation treaty with Vietnam.
If the diplomatic situation changes, Tran could be deported to the country of her parents' birth, says Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Nantel.
Tran, who has never been to Vietnam, says that "I consider myself a Southern Californian." She graduated with honors from UCLA in December. Her major: American literature and culture.
For Martine Kalaw, a graduate of Syracuse University's prestigious Maxwell School public affairs program, it took eight years and three lawyers to overturn a judge's order that would have sent her to the Congo, a country she left at age 4.
Kalaw, 26, is an orphan. Her stepfather died when she was 12. Three years later, she lost her mother.
That misfortune may have been her salvation, Kalaw says.
Unlike students who fear putting their parents at risk for deportation, she was able to take her case to the public. She first spoke out at an immigration rally where she shared a stage with McCain, and later testified before Congress.
"I was scared because I thought there would be a backlash," Kalaw says, who adds that she was treated for clinical depression during her ordeal. "I was extremely ashamed of my situation. Deportation proceedings are the most terrifying, belittling process."
On July 4, Kalaw says, her legal odyssey ended.
The Board of Immigration Appeals overturned her deportation order and awarded her permanent legal resident status, which will enable her to apply for citizenship in five years.
"Now that everything is secure, I'm looking to develop my career," she says.
"The sky's the limit."
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