Episode 1 – Ruth Wasem on Immigration

[0:00:00 Speaker 1] This’ll is Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Way take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. For more. Visit LBJ dot utexas. Study Teoh

[0:00:20 Speaker 0] My name

[0:00:22 Speaker 2] is Angela Evans, and I’m the dean of the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and I want to welcome you to our inaugural podcast called Policy on Purpose. My first guest today is Ruth Wasim. Ruth is a clinical professor of public policy practice at the LBJ School. Ruth is for many years studied immigration trends, asylum policy, human rights and unauthorised migration. And I’ve invited her to join me today to provide insight on the national conversation surrounding Doc in immigration as a whole. And I wanted you to hear her insights on how DACA fits in our current public policy discussions as well as historical perspective Ruth brings to this important issue. Ruth. Welcome.

[0:01:08 Speaker 3] Thank you so much, Angela. It’s a pleasure to be talking to you today and also on the faculty at the LBJ School. So thank you for inviting me.

[0:01:17 Speaker 2] Okay, So let’s just get started. We’re now in the position of having a president who is turning to the Congress and saying, I’m looking to you to see what you’re going to do about DACA And Congress is now working on legislation that’s trying to determine exactly its role tied with border security. So we have this issue going on with DACA and in conjunction with Border Security. Some people think this is a new issue. Some people think that this has never come up before. We haven’t been in a situation like this before or some people just have never been this involved in this kind of, ah, an issue. Can you tell us from your work with Congress, in your historical background on these issues about just how DACA fits into the full history of our whole immigration approach to our policy?

[0:02:02 Speaker 3] What DACA deferred action for childhood arrivals is is when President Barack Obama decided because Congress hadn’t acted on what was called the Dream Act legislation, he announced that he was not going to remove young people who had been brought here by their parents if they met certain conditions and in return for meeting those conditions and coming forward, they were given work authorizations, which has empowered them to be fully engaged in American society. Although people have alleged that this was unprecedented, I have found numerous times when presidents have viewed their broad discretionary authority and prosecutorial discretion to allow people who don’t have illegal immigration status to be president of the United States without fear of removal. I can take it as far back as President Eisenhower our own. LBJ provided parole benefits for Cubans that were fleeing Castro’s Cuba and so on. The example that I find the most similar to today’s DACA young people happened in the late 19 eighties when Ronald Reagan was president. And in 1986 after considerable debate, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which a substantially increased border security added AH, host of immigration enforcement. Interior requirements, including that was the first time it was illegal to work in the United States without authorization and in return for those increased enforcement mechanisms allowed several 1,000,000 foreign nationals in the United States illegally to adjust a legal permanent resident status. So the ERC, a legalization program, was one of the major accomplishments of the Reagan years. At the time, Congress had made a decision that family members of Urkal beneficiaries, if they did not meet the requirements of Erica Toe legalize that they could not benefit, that they would stay in an unauthorized status and be subject to removal, as the old immigration nationalization service says it was called them was actually processing these legalization applications. They found that upwards of a 1,000,000 people that were legalizing had family members in the United States and that this was a realist you. And it was also an issue of people who were afraid to come forward to legalize and get what they were eligible for, because maybe their spouse was not going to be eligible. So, um, Reagan, consistent with his position on on family values, basically instructed his attorney general, Ed Meese, that they were not going to deport these

[0:04:56 Speaker 7] people.

[0:04:57 Speaker 4] That policy, back in the eighties took the name, family fairness. And then when George H. W. Bush became president in 89 he actually expanded the program, and by that point, his commissioner of the immigration service, Gene McNary, told Congress that they thought upwards of 1.5 million people, maybe family members of beneficiaries, but they themselves

[0:05:24 Speaker 3] were in the United States out of status. So we’re

[0:05:26 Speaker 4] talking about a population almost double the size of today’s doctor. Particularly

[0:05:31 Speaker 2] interesting in the stunt. So what happened is you had a piece of legislation. When they went into implemented to execute it, they determined that there was 1.5 million people. In addition to that, Yes, we’re Ruth. Isn’t this the rub when you really start thinking about it about family? So when you think about a lot of these historical immigration objectives or policies to try to deal with illegal status, they seem to turn eventually on. What do we do about family members that air here? Beyond the targeted group? That seems to be an historical attention that is. So it’s going to be coming up in Dhaka, and it has come up

[0:06:05 Speaker 4] come up in Dhaka in

[0:06:07 Speaker 3] the context of there’s two proposals now that are before Congress to major approaches the Dream Act proposal, which has been around since well, this century, would put the young people on if they met the criteria to become legal permanent residents. That’s kind of what we associate as what we call the dream Act. The robbers, you say with them, are their parents who win. The dreamers become U. S citizens. They can petition for their parents to become legal permanent residents. Opponents to the Dream X say we can’t reward bad behavior.

[0:06:45 Speaker 4] And even if

[0:06:46 Speaker 3] they’re willing to say Well, the young people came through no fault of their own. Their parents knowingly brought them here so they would want to put restrictions and treat the parents of the dream Act beneficiaries differently than in the other parent of a legal permanent residents. So that raises some really thorny issues.

[0:07:08 Speaker 4] The other big

[0:07:08 Speaker 3] legislative proposal that’s out there would be to do statutorily through something called the Bridge Act what President Obama did through executive action. And that is for Congress to say if young people meet these criteria, which are essentially the criteria the dream act, they are allowed to stay here for three years now. It doesn’t resolve their futures.

[0:07:30 Speaker 2] It’s sort of kicks the can down the road in some way. Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re still faced with this issue that most Americans, um, from polling and I know you have some recent poll numbers there. Most Americans do not oppose the dreamer staying in the United States.

[0:07:46 Speaker 4] What was

[0:07:47 Speaker 2] different then, then, is different now. In terms of is it? One of the problems is that they’re tying this, the DACA to the border security issues where their border security issues tied to the past experiences folks had with the folks who were here illegally.

[0:08:04 Speaker 4] To a lesser extent, I think they actually thought when they passed the 80

[0:08:08 Speaker 3] six act, which, in addition to legalizing it, ratcheted up border security and added very stringent employer sanctions provisions. So

[0:08:18 Speaker 4] Congress thought and the administration thought in the eighties they had

[0:08:22 Speaker 3] addressed the policies that would deal with future flows of unauthorized migrants. What’s different today is whether or not there’s ways toe partner Dhaka with other bills

[0:08:37 Speaker 4] it took the family fairness

[0:08:39 Speaker 3] legislation could not pass on its own. It was part of a much broader package of reforming legal immigration.

[0:08:45 Speaker 4] One of the things

[0:08:46 Speaker 3] that has come up with the Dream Act legislation that’s the doctor individuals were also frequently called the Dreamers is that the Dream Act legislation needs to be passed as part of with other things along the way, both people that want more border security see it as a sweetener to get votes for border security. But also individuals who want more sweeping comprehensive immigration reform don’t want the dream act to pass alone, because that removes one of the most popular elements. So in a way, it’s kind of interesting that members on both sides of the aisle are very sympathetic and supportive of the Dream Act. It’s almost because of its popularity that it’s held hostage to other agenda items in immigration and immigration enforcement that keep it from happening now. There was a lot of attention recently about whether or not the president had struck a deal with the Democratic leaders about increased enforcement and whether or not it would be money for building

[0:09:55 Speaker 8] a wall.

[0:09:56 Speaker 4] And, um, to me, linking

[0:10:00 Speaker 3] the Dream act with the wall is disproportionate because the wall is a lot of money and there’s a

[0:10:05 Speaker 8] whole lot of

[0:10:07 Speaker 3] important other issues it raises will be on the Dream Act and a lot of issues, particularly for people that live in Texas. Yes, Texas has a lot of mixed feelings about the wall and for good reason, because it’s it’s in our state. If that you recall when I talked about the family fairness that was packaged in a much bigger bill that reformed legal immigration, so does it make sense to think about putting the dream act with other pieces of immigration legislation where there’s a natural fit so that you could bring more people to the table and get the bill across the finish line? And there are certainly ways to do that if you could package it with, um, there’s a lot of interest in STEM students to study here in stem degrees. A business is very interested in them and creating visas for them. That’s a natural. There’s another very compelling population of agricultural workers that air here out of status, and employers and agriculture are very interested in making sure they have an adequate workforce to bring crops, you know, from the field to the markets. There’s a whole host of different things that have bipartisan support. Agricultural workers stem visas, those air, not partisan issues that could be added to the Dream Act as well as if people think they need to do additional enforcement measures of that could be something that would be on the table. I mean, it could pass on its own, but let me give you a sense of one of the problems of passing it on its own. There is a common base in both sides in both parties that would support the Dream Act. But there are people, as I mentioned before, that think it rewards illegal behavior that would be opposed to it as well as people that want some of these other immigration reforms made. And they realize that that the Dream Act is an important negotiating peace. So because of its very popularity, it makes it harder to pass alone because people see it is a natural and important partner to putting together a legislative package on immigration.

[0:12:18 Speaker 2] That’s why I think when we talk about this podcast being policy on purpose, people often don’t see the nuances. They see very simplistic binary choices. And when you think about all the different factors involved here, all the different possible coalitions, all the different possible implications, this becomes extremely difficult and complex. So, Ruth, I want to thank you so much for helping us understand this, and we will invite you back as we continue to work on this important issue. Thanks so much truth. It’s

[0:12:48 Speaker 3] been a pleasure.

[0:12:50 Speaker 1] Thistles Policy on Purpose, a podcast produced by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. We take you behind the scenes of policy with the people who help shape it. To learn more, visit LBJ dot utexas dot edu and follow us on Twitter or Facebook at the LBJ School. Thank you for listening