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At House Hearing on KIDS Act, GOP’s Newfound Compassion Toward DREAMers Isn’t Enough for DREAMers or Anybody Else

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House Republicans tried to make a gesture toward immigration reform—sort of—by holding an Immigration Subcommittee hearing on the KIDS Act yesterday, a bill that could grant DREAMers legal status but leave their parents vulnerable to deportation.  Some Republicans on the Committee tried to say nice things about DREAMers, while at the same time criticizing their parents for making the decision to come to the United States.

“We all view children as a special protected class,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC, and the chair of the immigration subcommittee) said in his opening statement, giving examples why the law treats children as a group not liable for their own decisions.

But when they asked actual DREAMer Rosa Velazquez (an activist with United We DREAM) and Pamela Rivera (the sister of a DREAMer) about the premise of the KIDS Act, the answer was clear: DREAMers are not willing to be treated as a “special protected class” if it means second-class treatment for their parents. At every turn, Velazquez and Rivera resisted the GOP’s attempts to divide their families. When House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) asked the very first question of the hearing—did Rivera think her mother would accept second-class legal status if it meant that her other daughter (Rivera’s sister Evelyn) could become a citizen—the room went silent.  During her testimony, Rivera had talked about the reasons her family immigrated from Colombia, which were centered on her parents’ desire to give their children a better life.  With his question, Goodlatte was using Rivera’s parents’ sacrifices as a tool against her, but she did not let him.  “I’m not comfortable saying I’m okay with that…my mom wants to be a part of this country. She still thinks of herself as an American” even though she’s been deported to Colombia, Rivera said. “She would want a shot at being a citizen.”

Velazquez addressed the question head-on in her testimony, saying that if the GOP decides to allow DREAMers to pursue citizenship but not their parents, they would be sending the message that “our parents are good enough to pick your crops and care for your children…but they’re not as good as you or me.”

This statement of solidarity and family unity was clearly a bit of a surprise for the House GOP. After all, even supporting citizenship for DREAMers is a recent (but important) step in the party’s “evolution”: every single Judiciary Committee GOPer save one (go Spencer Bachus!) was on the record voting to deport DREAMers just last month, when the House GOP passed Steve King’s amendment to defund DACA. And as the hearing was going on, the Internet continued to buzz with Steve King’s comments from the previous week about the vast majority of DREAMers being drug runners with “calves the size of cantaloupes”.  (Not that other Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have a terribly sterling reputation when it comes to immigration: committee chair Bob Goodlatte has called the DREAM Act “a nightmare,” while Ted Poe once said that it is “a law that discriminates against Americans.”) In fact, it’s certainly a possibility that the only reason Republicans like Goodlatte are making supportive noises about DREAMers is to goad Democrats into opposing it because it doesn’t address the status of all 11 million aspiring Americans, thereby setting up a blame game they think (incredibly) they can win instead of an endgame that leads to a policy breakthrough.

But if Republicans had persuaded themselves that they could win this argument and coax DREAMers into accepting a half-loaf solution, Velazquez and Rivera proved them wrong again and again. Every time a member of the Committee asked them if they thought the path to citizenship needed to include their parents—and this happened multiple times, possibly because Republicans were in denial about what they were hearing—the two young women answered yes. Eventually, the Republicans realized their attempt to look compassionate toward DREAMers was not going to succeed unless they could come around on citizenship for all 11 million undocumented, and they resorted to speaking over, cajoling, and nearly bullying Velazquez and Rivera.

Goodlatte’s cruel hypothetical question, trying to turn parents’ natural desire to see the best for their children into a trap for Rivera, was just the beginning. There was Raul Labrador (R-ID), who migrant-splained* the immigration system to Pamela and Rosa, making it sound like there were easy options for DREAMers like them to sponsor or bring back deported family members under the current immigration system–when most times, there aren’t. (You try obtaining a waiver for a 10-year-bar, especially when the person in question has already been deported.)

Mark Amodei (R-NV) asked the DREAMers to try and “step outside your own personal circumstances” and explain to him what it is that compels immigrants to come to the US without papers, so that he could try and prevent an effect by understanding its cause.  Then, amazingly, he seemed frustrated that the DREAMers could not give an easy answer to the complex causes of immigration and how to address it.

Finally, Trey Gowdy wanted to know why immigration reform advocates often refer to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US as a “homogeneous group” when he prefers to see them as a series of subgroups—DREAMers, parents, hard workers, and criminals.

It’s an easy answer, Congressman Gowdy: dividing up the community might be the approach the House GOP wants to take, but DREAMers do not see themselves as a group who should be favored while others are punished.  They are part of the broader community of 11 million aspiring Americans, millions of legal permanent residents and U.S. citizens living in mixed status families, and supporters who are pushing the House to enact a full immigration solution.

 

* Like “mansplaining,” but for people who assume they know more about the US immigration system than those who’ve to suffer through it.