What a Supreme Court Decision on Executive Action Could Mean for One Undocumented Immigrant

Today, in U.S. classrooms, you will find first, second, or third generation immigrant students. Most of these students are U.S. citizens.  However, among them, there exists an estimated 1.7 million undocumented young people under age 30 who are enrolled in high school, have graduated, obtained a GED, or are currently enrolled in elementary or middle school, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Each year, about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from American high schools. As undocumented, they are without basic access to the numerous opportunities available to their documented or U.S. citizen counterparts and face significant barriers to higher education. Undocumented students cannot receive federal education benefits, and in some states, may be ineligible for in-state tuition. These barriers add to the social and economic challenges undocumented students already face as a result of their status.

Jong-Min’s Story

Like so many of these students who have aspirations of higher education, I too, came from abroad—Seoul, South Korea—and arrived in the U.S. in 1981 under a student visa. I was only a one-year old baby back then, and when my visa expired in 1985, I became undocumented at the age of 5. I’ve now lived in the U.S. for the last 35 years. I attended public schools, graduating from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1998, and later graduating magna cum laude in 2003 from University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a BA in Sociology with a concentration in Criminal Justice and a Minor in Psychology.

Thirteen years later, I am still stuck in my invisible prison behind invisible bars and with invisible chains. This is a prison where my lack of Social Security number prevents me from working, driving, voting, and accessing certain basic human rights, like health care. I am too old for the temporary reprieve from deportation under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, as I missed the cut off by a year. If I were a DACA recipient, I would be eligible for a work permit and temporary protection from removal. However, that obstacle has never deterred me, and even though it been many years since college, I still aspire to go to law school, and ultimately become a federal judge.

As the Supreme Court decides the fate of President Obama’s executive actions in United States v. Texas, which includes two deferred action initiatives – an expanded DACA and a proposed Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) initiative –  I, along with an estimated 290,000 persons eligible for expanded DACA and over 3.7 million persons eligible for DAPA, eagerly await their decision. In the absence of congressional reform, this is our hope along with our dream to contribute more fully to the country we have long called home.

Additional Resources 

•  U.S. Children of Undocumented Immigrants Set Up for Failure by Current Policies (American Immigration Council) – This blog demonstrates the profound impact of current immigration policies on pre-K-12 U.S. students.

• What the U.S. Supreme Court Case on Executive Action Means for Schools (American Immigration Council) – This blog details some of the implications of United States v. Texas on schools.

What the U.S. Supreme Court Case on Executive Action Means for Schools

On April 18, the eight sitting justices on the U.S. Supreme Court will consider United States v. Texas, a politically charged lawsuit about the legality of some of President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

The initiatives in dispute—expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA)—have been on hold since a district court in Texas issued a preliminary injunction (a temporary block) in the case in February 2015. A Supreme Court decision in favor of the United States could clear the way for the initiatives to go forward as early as June 2016. A decision against the United States, or a 4-4 split decision would affirm the lower court’s ruling and uphold the block on expanded DACA and DAPA.

Both DACA and DAPA are deferred action initiatives. To qualify to stay in this country, individuals must have lived here five years, register with the government, pay taxes, and pass a criminal background check. A grant of deferred action does not confer any type of lawful immigration status, enforceable legal rights, or an ability to remain permanently in the United States. Nonetheless, it allows families to remain together and to apply for work authorization.

Expanded DACA and DAPA have the potential to affect a substantial number of American families.  The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates that 3.7 million undocumented immigrants could qualify for protection from removal under the two initiatives.  Additionally, 86 percent of children of undocumented parents, or 4.4 million, have parents that would qualify for DAPA. Many of these children are U.S. citizens.

There are also, however, educational and socio-emotional health benefits. For example, as of December 31, 2015, over 700,000 young people have received the 2012 version of DACA (not challenged in the lawsuit), broadening their educational opportunities. Many recipients now have access to public universities, trade schools, and additional scholarship opportunities.

Many educational groups and advocates, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, have stated in a friend-of-the-court brief filed on the Obama administration’s side, that "DACA is unique among immigration policies because it makes educational attainment a condition for eligibility." They highlight that in order to be eligible for DACA, an individual must be “either in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are honorably discharged veterans of the U.S. Coast Guard or the U.S. Armed Forces.”

Additionally, they note that the DAPA program would extend significant stress relief to families with school-aged children. Not surprisingly, removing the threat of a parent’s deportation and the ability to improve economic prospects via work authorization may mitigate some of the statistically profound disadvantages facing children with at least one undocumented parent.

Executive Action Resources

• Defending DAPA and Expanded DACA Before the Supreme Court (American Immigration Council) – This guide provides brief answers to common questions about United States v. Texas, including what is at stake in the case, how the litigation began, what the contested issues are, and the impact the case may have on our country. 

• Shield From Deportation Threat to Get Day at High Court (Education Week) – This article details some of the implications of United States v. Texas on schools.

Lesson Plans

• Just What is Executive Action? A Lesson from the Principal’s Desk Students apply inductive reasoning skills about individual school policies set by the principal in order to understand what execution action is and what its limitations are.

• Writing a Way In: Multiple Perspectives on Executive Action Students write their way into understanding the multiple perspectives that surround this immigration issue after reading reactions in favor and against the expanded DACA and DAPA initiatives.

Three Classroom Resources to Engage Students this President’s Day

President’s Day will be celebrated on Monday, February 15^th. Usually when President’s Day is addressed in the classroom, it takes place in the primary grades with activities centered around some of the nation’s most revered presidents. But what if this year, observing this national holiday in the classroom was different? What if President’s Day was used as a springboard for engaging students in exploratory learning where they connect the study of our presidents and the power of the executive branch to the topic of immigration?

Here are three engaging resources, two of which are created using HSTRY, a digital learning platform, to help you plan an exciting lesson to teach about immigration. We encourage you to set-up a free teacher account on HSTRY in order to adapt the lessons and share with students.

1) American By Belief: A Family Story - Unless you are 100% Native American your family came to the United States from someplace else. People come for a variety of reasons — to work, reunite with family, get an education or sometimes in search of safety and freedom. This brief lesson is a perfect way to initiate a classroom discussion on why people migrate. You can also extend the activity with our Crossing Borders with Digital Storytelling lesson plan, as well as with the President Lincoln Cottage’s lesson plan for their American By Belief exhibit. The brochure of their educational programs includes a map to “Tell Your Immigration Story.” You can also email them for a free hard copy which makes for a larger classroom display.

An immigrant writes on note on the wall of the "American by Belief" exhibit at President Lincoln's Cottage explaining how she named her son after the President. Credit: http://lincolnscottage.tumblr.com/ 

Engage your students using this lesson we co-created with HSTRY. After you set-up a teacher account, click “copy the timeline,” then sort images and text (using a drag and drop function) into the six identified push/pull factors of immigration. Designed for primary learners (grades 3 and up), this lesson can easily be modified for older students. Students can copy the timeline and add more text and images to fill the categories. Debrief as a class and use the student handbook on HSTRY to properly cite online sources.

Click here to access the American By Belief: A Family Story lesson.

2) Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to the Civil War – This lesson is almost guaranteed to deepen understanding of our nation’s 16^th president! In this lesson, students will evaluate the impact and reception of immigrants and their contributions to the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War and explore how immigrants view Lincoln.

Examining three essential questions about immigrant contributions in the Civil War, students sort the text and images to best answer the questions using the HSTRY platform. They add more resources through recommended sites such as the Library of Congress’s Civil War collection. This lesson is designed for high school students, who can then use sentence stems provided to write and discuss how immigrants contributed to the Union victory. Additionally, this lesson could not have been developed without the scholarship of Professor Jason Silverman, author of Lincoln and the Immigrant, and Patrick Young, Esq.

Click here to access the Lincoln and Immigrant Contributions to the Civil War lesson plan.

3) Two Timely Lessons to Teach about Executive Action: The President’s executive action on immigration has been greeted with joy, relief, sadness, and contempt. Just what is an executive action and how can students examine the multiple responses to it are the focus areas of our two popular lesson plans. It is a rich opportunity in the high school classroom to: extend critical discussions on the separation of powers, examine the effects of policy on individuals, and analyze the arguments made by both sides to help students become civically engaged and informed.

Click here to read our blog post about our lessons and access both of the lesson plans.

We seek to connect teachers and students with the most relevant, fact-based information to teach immigration critically and creatively–-at no cost. If you like our work, please share this email, tell a friend and give them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to receive updates and free resources such as lesson plans, books reviews, and community grants. Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.

Two Timely Lessons to Teach about Executive Action on Immigration

In November 2014, President Barack Obama announced a series of administrative reforms to his immigration policies, collectively known as executive action on immigration.  The centerpiece of these reforms are two deferred action programs—Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and an expanded version of an existing program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). These programs have been tied up in litigation. On January 19, 2016, the Supreme Court announced that it will review a lower court’s ruling which has blocked implementation of the programs. The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral arguments in April 2016. A decision is expected in the case, United States v. Texas, by the end of June 2016.

Without a doubt, the deferred action programs, which taken together could provide as many as 5 million immigrants with temporary relief from deportation, will continue to be a fixture in the presidential election year. As such, it is a rich opportunity in the classroom to: extend critical discussions on the separation of powers, examine the effects of policy on individuals, and analyze the arguments made by both sides to help students become civically engaged and informed.

In light of the continuous stream of misinformation and inflammatory comments in the politicized immigration debate, these executive actions are no exception.

We seek to address how teachers can use this timely and relevant case with updates we’ve made to our lessons on executive action that allow high school students to examine the issue both critically and creatively. Our lessons are aligned to the Common Core and C3Framework for Social Studies Standards.

Additionally, we explain below some basic information on executive action as well as links for further understanding the legal challenges.

Engaging, Adaptable Lessons

• Just What is Executive Action? A Lesson from the Principal’s Desk 

As suggested by the title, students will apply inductive reasoning skills about individual school policies set by the principal in order to understand what execution action is and what its limitations are.

• Writing a Way In: Multiple Perspectives on Executive Action

The President’s executive action on immigration has been greeted with joy, relief, sadness, and contempt. How can one decision trigger so many varied responses? By weaving non-fiction accounts into creative writing, students will be able to write their way into understanding the multiple perspectives that surround this immigration issue. Importantly, the lesson uses multimedia to engage students and provide the relevant context and background information for the lesson.

To view a related resource for the classroom, see:

• “Supreme Court to review Obama’s power on deportation policy” (The Washington Post, January 2016) We recommend students watch the brief “Immigration by the Numbers” video (0:56) included in this article.

If You Want to Learn More… Here’s a Brief Summary

There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.  In 2012, the Obama administration allowed young immigrants who were brought here as children to apply for renewable two-year deportation deferrals, work permits and social security cards. This original program, called DACA, is still in effect and is not challenged by the lawsuit United States v. Texas. 

The reforms in the 2014 executive action range from temporary protections for an expanded group of unauthorized young people (expanded DACA) and for certain parents (DAPA), to modernizing and streamlining the visa application process, to new guidance to better prioritize the immigration agencies’ use of their limited enforcement resources.

The centerpiece (and most debated) of these reforms is an expansion of the current DACA initiative and the creation of the DAPA initiative for the parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who meet certain criteria — including passing a background check and having lived in the country at least five years. Together, these initiatives could provide as many as 5 million immigrants with temporary relief from deportation.

The Obama administration’s executive action was subsequently challenged by 26 states and blocked by lower courts. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a trial court decision to enjoin, or halt, expanded DACA and DAPA. The federal government then requested that Supreme Court hear the case (this is called a petition for certiorari), and Seven groups filed amicus (or “friend of the court”) briefs in support of the request.  The Supreme Court agreed to review the case in January 2016.

To view related, more detailed resources, see:

•  A Guide to the Executive Action (Special Report, November 2014) 
• Executive Grants of Temporary Immigration Relief, 1956-Present (Fact Sheet, October 2014) *A close read of this short policy report for students is included in the “Just What is Executive Action?” lesson.
• Understanding the Legal Challenges to Executive Action (January 2016)

We seek to connect teachers and students with the most relevant, fact-based information to teach immigration critically and creatively – at no cost.  If you like our work, please share this email, tell a friend and give them this link http://bit.ly/1KdE5Zz to receive updates and free resources such as lesson plans, books reviews, and community grants. Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.

A Student-Centered, Project-Based Approach to Teaching about Immigration

On Monday, October 26th, we invited more than 50 students and their teachers from selected Long Island schools to come together to discuss immigration law and policy at our Teach Immigration Student Forum, a full day event held at Nassau BOCES, Garden City, NY.

Their teachers, Dr. Steven Burby and Ms. April Francis, applied for our two-year program where we provide educators with free and current educational materials on immigration law and policy and pair them with volunteers who are immigration lawyers. Together the teacher and lawyer teams co-teach at least two classroom lessons and then help students find their point of view in the production of student-created materials that connect to what they have learned and to share with their school and communities.

At this student forum, seventh-grade students from Lawrence Road Middle School in Uniondale and ninth-graders from the Brentwood Freshman Center engaged in concurrent workshops about visas for immigrants and the President’s executive action regarding immigration. Students worked in groups to learn deliberative dialogue via a partnership with Street Law, Inc., a non-profit education organization, to help them examine immigration reform and issues in the upcoming presidential election using evidence and logic.

“The information the students are learning will effect change in their own community,” said Ms. Francis, Lawrence Road Middle School Social Studies teacher.

 “This is an opportunity for project-based service learning. These students are motivated” said Brentwood English teacher Dr. Steve Burby.

What follows are photos from the forum highlighting the work of participating students. We look forward to continue our work with them and their teachers as they develop service-learning projects. 

Students listening to a session on visas for immigrants and visitors. 

Students writing monologues to explore varied responses to the President’s executive action on immigration.

Students working together to complete the writing task.

A student group participating in a deliberative dialogue on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Additional Resources:

• Teachers interested in the program attended free trainings in the summer of 2015 and the fall of 2014 and were supplied with teaching materials and recommended activities. To learn more about our previous training, please click here.

Stay Connected!

The American Immigration Council offers free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to teach immigration. We also welcome teacher and student book reviews and contributions to our blog. Email us at teacher@immcouncil.org and follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration #teachimmigration.

Empowering Educators to Teach Immigration

On June 29^th, 2015 just three days after the last official day of school and three days into their summer break, a group of 16 dedicated Long Island educators, social workers, and administrators participated in a full-day training on immigration as an introduction to the American Immigration Council’s Teach Immigration project. This project is an educational imitative designed to increase and improve teaching and learning about immigration law and policy at selected high schools on Long Island.

On this day, we focused on unpacking key concepts and issues in immigration that are integral to fostering informed and honest classroom discussions, sorely desired by both educators and students. As teachers gathered for the training, many conversed about their recent commencement ceremonies and beamed with pride on their students’ achievements. We began by facilitating an Immigration Status Privilege Walk, where asked participants to literally walk through the benefits and limitations conferred with an immigration status from a series of scenarios. We debriefed on what it felt like to be excluded and included, and how everyone to different degrees is affected by the privilege of immigration status. Soon after, teachers shared stories of separated families and interrupted educations many of them heard about. Throughout the day, they cited examples of how forming relationships with students and their families helped to address their students’ needs, while also recognizing the importance of staying informed on immigration issues so that they could speak about them in such a way as to engender positive school climates and attitudes on immigration.

 

To address this latter concern in our training, we looked at writing our way into the multiple reactions to executive action. By weaving non-fiction accounts taken from article clippings into creative writing, educators were able to write their way into understanding the multiple perspectives that surround this immigration issue, and importantly use this as critical writing and thinking lesson with their students. To deepen understandings and empower students to discuss immigration issues, our partner, Lena Moreale Scott from Street Law, trained teachers on deliberative dialogue, a strategy which provides a thorough understandings of both sides to an issue and allows students to deliberate using evidence and logic. 

In order to meet the need of fostering a positive school climate, Eileen Gale Kugler, author of Innovative Voices in Education: Engaging Diverse Communities, also spoke to educators on the need for reflection on assumptions and identities we all have of ourselves and others with practical ways to allow for students and school professionals to build fuller understandings of who they are and what they bring to the classroom.

 

As teachers left the training, many were enthusiastic about trying new strategies for the classroom. One teacher wrote to us saying she was “looking forward to using some formats as models for the classroom. [The training emphasized] excellent critical thinking and writing! Teaching our students to deliberate about immigration policy was very relevant and helpful with developing curriculum.” Another told us that what benefitted him most was “meeting like-minded individuals and receiving truly applicable activities that meet K-12 academic goals.” Still another teacher stated, “You are reminded that when we talk about immigration issues, we are talking about real people!”

The attendees are invited to continue the journey with Teach Immigration by partnering with a local immigration attorney who will help co-teach lessons about immigration law and policy and will serve as an issue expert and local contact. The educators are also invited to bring their students to a student forum to be held in the fall of 2015 on Long Island.  Students who participate in the program will be eligible to apply for a student leadership program which will match up to three outstanding students with local organizations in a summer internship. The internship will allow students to build their resume, network, learn new skills and earn a stipend while serving as a peer leader.

         

We look forward to continuing our work with this engaged group of educators on Long Island through the Teach Immigration project and to share our work and lessons learned. Many of the lessons and resources we offer them are available for free on our website.  

Additional Resources:

• To learn more about the Teach Immigration project, please visit this website: www.teachimmigration.org 

• For information on the economic benefits Long Island immigrants are making to their communities, please review this new report by the Fiscal Policy Institute, “New Americans on Long Island: A Vital Fifth of the Economy.”  You can also read the American Immigration Council’s State Fact Sheets to learn about the economic contributions made by immigrants in your state and district.

We offer free lesson plans, resources, book/film reviews, and grants to #teachimmigration. Stay connected! Follow us on twitter @ThnkImmigration and/or email us at teacher@immcouncil.org.