New Congress could change tone, if not rules, on immigration

For all the post-election talk about Democrats taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives and working to implement a pro-immigrant agenda, Los Angeles resident José López feels certain of only one thing:

At least one chamber of Congress won’t be fighting to kick him out of the country.

Beyond that, he said, he’s skeptical.

López is an unauthorized immigrant with DACA status, meaning he has temporary but legal reprieve from deportation and a permit to work in the United States. In the two years since Donald Trump was elected president – and with Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress – life for immigrants like López has been in limbo.

But even with a more immigrant-friendly House of Representatives, López doesn’t hold out much hope that federal lawmakers will come together to create a law that will help him cement citizenship in the country where he’s grown up.

“I’ve been disappointed too many times,” said López, 25, an organizer with DREAM Team LA, a group of undocumented immigrants and their allies.

About 700,000 people who were brought to this country as children, including 200,000 in California, are protected by DACA, also known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. About a year ago, Trump, through his now fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, moved to phase out DACA, which originally was passed by President Barack Obama.

Now, as the country looks to a new Congress in January, DACA is only one of several immigration-relation matters that remain up in the air.

Others include the fates of asylum seekers trying to get into the United States, people living here with protected status, and legal residents looking to apply for citizenship who have tapped into public assistance.

A Democrat-controlled House will lead to more oversight and pushback on Trump’s immigration agenda, legal scholars and immigration advocates said. But that pushback could create gridlock between the Democrats in the House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Whether the new power dynamic in Washington leads to legislative breakthroughs or programs affecting deportations, border security, legal immigrants or illegal immigration, is left to be seen.

Some suggest the election results will bring about some significant shifts, in tone if not legislation.

“The conversation will change drastically,” said Cristina Jiménez, executive director of United We Dream, which bills itself as the largest immigrant youth-led group in the country.

“What you have so far is a Congress that has rubberstamped everything the administration has been doing,” she said.

“What we’ll have now is a House that will stand in opposition.”

New hope for DACA?

There won’t be much pressure on Congress to do anything related to DACA as long as lawsuits about the program are still winding their way through the legal system, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at New York University School of Law.

“I don’t think there will be critical pressure required for Congress to act until the Supreme Court rules on this,” Chishti said.

The state of California, the University of California system and other parties filed lawsuits after Trump and Sessions said they would phase out the DACA, which Obama created in 2012. The government has continued to renew applications from people who already had DACA, but it hasn’t been accepting new applicants following several court rulings against Trump’s action. (The most recent came on Nov. 8, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump’s move to rescind DACA was unlawful.)

Congress previously has considered passing a so-called Dream Act for young people that included a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients. In the past, such proposals had the backing of at least some Republicans, including the late Sen. John McCain, among others.

But the same midterm elections that gave Democrats control of the House also led to the Republicans slightly boosting their margin of control in the Senate. What’s more, the new GOP Senate may be tougher on immigration and less willing to negotiate on programs touted by immigrant-rights advocates.

“The Senate has become more conservative,” Chishti noted.

Santa Ana resident Jose Servin, a DACA recipient, said he and others who share his views on immigration are simply hoping the House will stave off implementation of Trump-proposed changes to immigration law, including one that would deny green cards and citizenship to anybody who has accepted certain government benefits.

Moving forward, Servin said, he and other advocates also will push to defund the Trump administration’s stepped-up push to deport undocumented people, including those with no criminal histories.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” said Servin, communications director for the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, a statewide alliance of immigrant youth-led community organizations.

Other immigration-related matters

Since his election, Trump has consistently pushed, on several fronts, to slow all types of immigration, illegal and legal.

In addition to striking down DACA, Trump also moved to end Temporary Protected Status for most of its recipients. The program lets people from countries affected by natural disaster or war to live in the United States for a set period of time.

Trump also imposed, or tried to impose, a couple of travel bans targeting mostly Muslim-majority countries. And he’s pushed for a bigger border wall at the border with Mexico, reduced the number of refugees the U.S. will admit to the country, and proposed making green cards and citizenship harder to obtain.

His supporters hailed the changes, saying they are a much needed brake to what they see as unfettered illegal immigration and an abuse of the country’s laws.

The president also has talked of ending birthright citizenship, which would require a constitutional amendment, and he described a caravan of Honduran immigrants that began arriving at the Tijuana-San Diego border this week as “an invasion.” Both topics were talking points prior to the Nov. 6 midterm, but since then, the president dropped the subject in his public statements and hasn’t mentioned them on his popular Twitter feed.

“(The caravan) was much more of an election issue than the evidence of a crisis,” Chishti said. “He also stopped talking about birthright citizenship.

“He was using it as a slogan,” Chishti added. “It worked well at his rallies.”

In one of the harsher immigrant-related actions – one that drew wide condemnation – Trump also created a short-lived zero tolerance policy, which called for separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents. (Previous administrations had allowed for some temporary separations, but under Trump separations became the rule more than the exception.)

The new Congress is likely to resume its historic role as watchdog over the executive branch. That means House committees will be more vigilant in their oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration plans and programs, said Niels Frenzen, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

“The Republican Congress hasn’t been willing to look at what’s going on within the Department of Homeland Security,” Frenzen said. “And the (former) attorney general (Jeff Sessions,) with all his legal pronouncements, drastically changed the asylum process in the United States.”

In addition to an oversight role, House Democrats will have a greater say on how money is spent.

“The House of Representatives will be able to control appropriations to a large extent,” Frenzen said. “For example, by refusing to allow federal money for deployment at the border.”

Jack Pitney, Claremont McKenna College professor of American politics, is more succinct in what he expects will be accomplished under the new Congress.

“Nothing.”

“At the beginning of a new Congress, there’s ritual talk of bipartisanship and cooperation,” Pitney said.

“But there’s no common ground between Trump’s position and that of Congressional Democrats. If anything, the remaining Republican Congress is even more hostile to immigration reform.”

Pitney expects closer scrutiny of the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security as well as other agencies.

“That’s true across the board. After a two-year pause, it will be subject to vigorous oversight. There are a lot of problems with (Housing and Urban Development), for example. Every agency of government will be under a microscope.”

As for achieving any meaningful legislation or changes, Pitney offered this prediction:

“One word: ‘gridlock.’”

RELATED STORIES

Trump considers family separation ‘2.0’; more immigrants might already be separated

For immigrant families without biological parents, separation might be permanent

Supreme Court travel ban ruling prompts different visions of America