I'm not a DREAMer, just another immigrant who happens to have the good fortune to arrive in this country with the right kind of papers.
I got a little taste of how tough it is to not have a valid driver's license when my new paperwork hadn't arrived in the mail, while the old one had expired. For a couple of months I drove like a paranoid who religiously checked the rear view mirror for cops, installed a map app showing reported police locations, and even drove the long way to avoid known cop hangouts.
I experienced a really close call when a state trooper patrol car suddenly popped behind and followed me. He must have followed me for only a couple of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity at the time. Luckily there was a McDonalds, so I pulled into the parking lot to shake him off, because I know that he couldn't make a traffic stop on private property. I drove around the drive-through lane hoping that he simply gave up and drove on, only to see that he parked and waited in an empty parking lot next to the restaurant. Cursing the wind, I parked and walked into the McDonalds with my daughter.
You see, the danger of falling out of legal status is that your data is in the system. When the trooper punched in my license plate number, his little computer terminal said that the owner of the vehicle has expired driver's license. He was just waiting for me to get to the emptier and wider section of the road ahead, so he could stop me without obstructing too much traffic. My pulling into a private parking lot must have pissed him enough to make him wait. Since my 9-year old daughter was with me, I was gonna dadgum sit overnight in that 24-hour McDonalds if I have to, to avoid arrest that would subject her to the mental distress of watching her dad handcuffed like a criminal, and to avoid her being put in custody of some stranger until I could get my out of town sister to pick her up.
So, I picked a table from where I could see the trooper's car easily. I bought coffee and sat twiddling my thumbs, and when I still saw the patrol car after 10 minutes, I decided to buy my daughter something to eat. When I returned to the table with the chicken nuggets, lo and behold, the car wasn't there anymore. Maybe he figured that waiting for me would cost him at least half an hour off the road and endanger his prospect of making the ticket quota, or maybe he saw my daughter and had a compassionate moment. I almost dragged my daughter back to the car and left the place quickly, before the trooper had a chance to change his mind and double back.
Living like this for a couple of months was stressful, so you all must have nerves of steel to pull it off for years. You truly are better persons than I am.
I also met and befriended somebody on a forum for my country. At first I thought he was an American, he sure acts and sounds like one, and he doesn't really speak my language. I was surprised to learn later that he is, in fact, a fellow citizen. Like you all, he was brought to USA as a child and raised here. Now, if Uncle Sam kicks my sorry bum back to my country, I would have no problem whatsoever to fit in because I was born and raised there, even graduated college there. But, kicking somebody like him out is downright cruelty in my mind. He is an American for all intents and purposes but the legal one, and it pains me to see him struggle to live in a country that never really is his home. DACA came too late for him, by a couple of years.
Allow me to ramble on a bit more...
At first I thought DACA was just a sinister election gimmick by Obama, designed to garner support from relatives of young and desperate undocumented immigrants. He offers you work permits if you agree to put yourself on the deportation list (albeit delayed by 2 years)? What the hell kind of offer is that? But as I see thousands and thousands register, it dawned on me: no president today can win an election by deporting a million and a half young productive people outright, who had no control over how they were brought here. Even if Romney wins, he can kiss reelection goodbye if he doesn't extend the program and doesn't have a comprehensive immigration reform to take its place, because he would in effect kick out a million and a half people out en masse. That would be a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions and a political suicide, because I don't think the majority of Americans is that callous.
If Obama wins he can extend DACA a couple more times, tackling immigration reform at his leisure. If Romney wins he can't extend the program without costing him support from far right Republicans, but he can't terminate it either without a viable alternative and risk angering most Americans. This should give him a very strong incentive to work with Democrats to craft a long overdue immigration overhaul. You, my friends, win either way. Obama is a genius.
Anyway, I hope you don't mind me visiting here. My heart goes out to you, and I wish you all the best of luck.
Welcome to DAP Cloudless,and have to say I enjoyed your story.Concerning DACA,actually there is no 'deportation list' even though Deferred action usually comes with a Notice to Appear,DACA doesn't,so effectively it is just "Deferred Action" without the fear of removal.However,no one can say how the information would be used if an immigration conservative gets in the White House and as you mentioned individuals are a bit concerned about it.
As for the politics concerning the matter,I am simply not so sure it is that easy since I still expect the House Republicans to still be in control who have some of the most ardent immigration reduction politicians on the House Judiciary alone and don't understand what is their incentive to allowing a more comprehensive approach.
Yeah, DACA is a special program with special eligibility rules, so it's not a garden variety deferred action. The executive branch can't give you legal status equivalent to a visa, but it can choose & promise to ignore your offense, just like a district attorney can legally offer immunity to criminals in exchange for information on other criminals.
Still, kids who came without POE inspection have to give up being invisible to the feds, now the feds know where they are. I don't know if you are subject to address change reporting requirement, but visa holders like me must keep the CIS updated of our current address within 10 days or risk deportation. Theoretically an unsympathetic President can turn around and use it as a hit list for deportation. If Romney wins and put somebody like Ashcroft as AG, he can choose to thin the herd by deporting any DACA beneficiary who has been convicted of something, even a single misdemeanor. He can sell that to the American public as a way to reward only the snow-white pure kids.
Gosh, don't start me on Ashcroft. He instituted NSEERS to all foreigners from majority Muslim countries plus North Korea (just so he could say it was not ALL Muslim countries). I lost many friends who weren't more illegal than the next restaurant busboy. If they didn't register they were committing federal felony, if they did then the CIS had no option but to arrest and deport them.
Anyway, the economy is improving and the demography is changing, both are bad for far right Republicans. History is on your side.
