NORTHAMPTON — Laurie Millman is crossing her fingers awaiting news about the Supreme Court’s decision on President Barack Obama’s immigration initiatives.
The Obama administration is asking the justices to allow two programs to move forward that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States.
“That Supreme Court ruling would be huge for us,” said Millman, executive director of the Center for New Americans in Northampton.
“It would impact so many people and we are licensed to provide services, so we could absolutely help people,” she said. Center for New Americans provides education and resources for immigrants in western Massachusetts.
The Obama programs would apply to parents of children who are citizens or are living in the country legally.
Eligibility also would be expanded for the president’s 2012 effort that applies to people who were brought here illegally as children. More than 700,000 people have taken advantage of that earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
The new program for parents, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), and the expanded program for children could reach as many as 4 million people, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Millman said the implementation of DAPA would mean not only temporary relief from deportation, but would also provide the undocumented parents of children who were born in the United States what she called “access.”
Millman explained, “When I say access, it means they would be able to get a driver’s license, they would be able to get a work authorization, they would have access to fair labor practices.”
What the Supreme Court must decide is whether the president has the authority to temporarily remove the threat of deportation and offer work permits to those who would be covered under DAPA.
Texas is leading 26 states led by Republicans in challenging the programs that Obama announced in 2014 and that have been put on hold by lower courts. Those states say the administration usurped power that belongs to Congress, and Justice Anthony Kennedy indicated some support for that view.
“It’s as if … the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it. That’s just upside down,” Kennedy said Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Megan Kludt, an immigration attorney who works for the Curran & Berger immigration law firm at 74 Masonic St. in Northampton, said she believes the president does not have discretion to create a new law giving someone permanent status, but does have the discretion to establish a priority system and guidelines on the order to deport people.
“The executive branch’s job is to deport individuals without authorization to remain in the United States, but there are too many people and not enough resources in place to deport the roughly 11 million of them,” she said.
Kludt said she feels pretty positive about Obama’s plan, because it formalizes deferred action into two programs to help.
It’s important to note that DAPA does not provide any path to citizenship whatsoever, said Kludt.
“Rather than having (U.S.) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) go after them like low-hanging fruit, Obama wants ICE to focus on removing criminals,” she said.
Kludt and Millman agreed that this potential change in policy would impact many people in the Pioneer Valley.
“A lot of people in our community are raising American families but don’t have legal status,” Kludt said. “Some aren’t paying taxes, aren’t able to fully integrate into our community because they are living in constant fear of being deported.”
She said DAPA would improve the position for these undocumented immigrants to advocate for better rights and benefits. Their willingness to invest in education would also increase, if they were provided with a way to feel more confident about their futures, Kludt predicted.
Millman added that the approval of DAPA would mean that “people who are here, who are already living here, would finally be able to come out from the shadows.”
Kludt said she also thinks about the dangerous situations that immigrants often return to when they are deported.
“A lot of immigrants living locally are from Central America, where they face incredible violence,” she said.
Kludt works with the CARA Pro Bono Project, based in Washington, which coordinates the efforts of organizations working to provide free legal representation to mothers and children detained at the border. She has done on-site work for the project near the Mexican border and continues to manage remote volunteers from Northampton.
“They are afraid of what might happen if they had to go back,” she said of the immigrants, referring to the violence in their home countries. “The DAPA program would give a little bit of security for them.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday that the bulk of immigrants who live in the U.S. illegally “are here whether we want them or not,” the Associated Press reported.
Kludt agreed that undocumented immigrants “aren’t going anywhere, anyway.”
She said this program applies to people who are already a part of local communities.
“They’re good people making huge contributions,” she said, adding that immigrants are the “backbone of the local farming industry and restaurant industry.”
“A lot of work here in the Valley is work other people don’t want to do,” she said. “It’s important to provide them with work authorization until a better plan can be reached.”
If the court is split ideologically, the case could end in a 4-4 tie following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. That would leave the programs in limbo, almost certainly through the end of Obama’s presidency.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide by late June whether the efforts can move forward in the waning months of Obama’s presidency.
While a decision to move forward with DAPA would help to fix a longtime problem, Kludt said, Obama’s immigration legacy is somewhat of “a mixed bag.”
“On the one hand, just to fight to implement DAPA is laudable,” she said. But, Kludt added, America has seen more aggressive deportations under Obama than under previous presidents.
“He has really taken the deportation bull by the horns on each side,” she said. “Certain groups of people have experienced more aggressive deportation, but he has been more lenient with other people.”
Still, she said, “It’s kind of unprecedented for a president to focus so heavily on immigration.”
Kludt added that DAPA being put in place would be a major accomplishment, and the debate always goes back to the idea that individuals without authorization are going to be here, anyway.
“The truth is that American businesses are hiring these people, but under the table,” Millman said.
“If they were to have temporary relief from deportation, they would also have access to legal protections.” She said they would have to be paid a minimum wage and would be protected from being made to work unpaid overtime.
“They’re here,” she said. “They’re picking our crops, they’re serving our food, but they don’t have any of the protections that we do.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.
Sarah Crosby can be reached at scrosby@gazettenet.com.