The following column is an opinion piece and reflects the views of only the author and not those of The Georgia Virtue.
By: Jaime Rangel
Recently, the Biden Administration announced a new proposed rule and public comment period that would strengthen the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was established nearly a decade ago to allow qualified young immigrants, or Dreamers, who came to the U.S. as children to live, work, and go to school. While this rulemaking is welcomed and a necessary step forward due to the continued legal challenges facing DACA, this is yet another temporary and limited patchwork fix for the program and those it protects. I encourage individuals to comment in support of the program but, at the end of the day, only Congress can enact legislation that permanently allows Dreamers like me to live in certainty in the country we call home by allowing us to apply for and change our immigrations status.
As a DACA recipient myself, I know the emotional and physical struggle of the more than 70,000 Georgia Dreamers who may have similar stories to mine. I was born in Mexico but was brought to this country when I was only six months old. My hometown is in the northwest Georgia Mountains where I participated in Boy Scouts and was even the first Latino to play baseball at Murray County High School. Raised with both southern family values and Mexican roots, I’m proud to be an immigrant, a Georgian, and an American.
The U.S. immigration system is seen as a beacon of hope for people around the world, but the reality of living through it is mentally taxing. For years I was held back from chasing my dreams due to my immigration status. When DACA was introduced, it changed my life and allowed me to expand my contributions to our state even further. Despite the progress that has been made and the immense benefits of the DACA program, our status is still temporary even though we hold essential jobs in key industries along with 170,000 undocumented Georgians and are contributing to our state’s economy.
Today, about 36,395 DACA-eligible recipients contribute $181.2 million in federal, state, and local taxes each year, and if DACA recipients were able to adjust their legal status, it is estimated we would be able to contribute an additional $14 billion to the U.S. economy annually. We are essential in many ways to this state, yet without a clear path to adjust our legal status, our place in the only country we know as home remains unstable.
It is clear that allowing people to adjust their immigration status so we can legally live out of the shadows would benefit our workforce and result in massive economic and tax impacts. With such a significant budgetary impact at both the state and federal level, Congress can accomplish this through the budget reconciliation process, and Senate Democrats have lined up a number of options for the Senate parliamentarian’s consideration to do just that. While initial proposals have been knocked down, I still have hope alongside Senate leadership and Georgia’s own Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Senator Ossoff recognized that the parliamentarian’s first ruling was “not the end of this effort” and that “Millions of hardworking immigrants in communities across America deserve the dignity and protection of citizenship.” I also had the honor to meet with Senator Warnock at the Latin American Association where he reassured his commitment to reforming our broken immigration system and vowed to work with colleagues in Washington to provide undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. However, words must be turned into action and I am calling on all our federal representatives to not let this once-in-a-generation opportunity pass to enact immigration reform as part of the budget reconciliation to allow millions of immigrants currently stuck in legal limbo to adjust their status.
Further, Congress has public opinion on their side with a majority of American voters across the political spectrum supportive of congressional action to establish a permanent solution for Dreamers, farmworkers, and undocumented essential workers who want to continue building their lives and contributing to the place they call home.
Today, I’m one of the 352,000 undocumented immigrants in Georgia counting on Congress to get the job done. I shared my story and emphasized the urgent need to enact immigration relief via reconciliation in this FWD.us ad launched this week in Georgia and nationwide. As I underscored in the video, undocumented immigrants play a significant role in our state’s economy workforce, and communities. It is absolutely critical that Congress passes protections for immigrants and their families now through the reconciliation process. If we fail to get the job done, we will face the financial and moral consequences of another year of congressional inaction.
This reporter is stupid. The CONSTITUTION is the law of the land. Congress would have to do an amendment to change