Editorial: President’s immigration plan leaves undocumented students vulnerable

President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration fail to provide real security for undocumented families despite providing expanded deferred action for certain undocumented persons in the United States.

That lack of security undermines the stability of every family member’s life and compromises undocumented students’ access to higher education and their continued presence on college campuses across California and the nation.

Approximately 400 undocumented students at UCLA and 2,000 undocumented students across the University of California will have to cope with the consequences of the exclusion of almost 7 million undocumented immigrants from the president’s plan, endangering their already tenuous access to higher education.

The executive actions announced last week include expanded deferred action programs for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, as well as an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to include a larger number of people and extend the period of deferred action from two to three years.

The executive actions are expected to protect as many as 5 million undocumented people from deportation.

Those changes are not inconsequential; students who have undocumented parents but are themselves documented can now be sure that their family is not in immediate danger of fracturing across borders. These mixed status families may also have greater economic security, since parents eligible for the program can apply for work permits and social security numbers to work legally in the U.S.

But the president’s provisions leave out a key segment of the undocumented population at risk for deportation: the parents of DACA recipients.

Before its recent expansion, DACA exclusively covered undocumented young persons under the age of 31 who arrived in the country under the age of 16. That means many current DACA recipients are college-aged people with undocumented parents. Despite the expansion of the program that protects them from immediate danger of deportation, DACA recipients’ families are still in danger of fragmentation and living without any measure of economic security.

So actions that on the surface seem to prioritize young people and students in fact leave them vulnerable to even more compromising circumstances than those they’re already in; they could lose their parents to deportation and, with them, an emotional and financial support system that allows them to pursue an education.

Aside from the exclusion of millions are the inherent limitations of executive action – any and all of the president’s announced provisions can be discontinued when the White House changes hands in 2016. And since the provisions are not allotted any federal funds like they would be if a bill went through congress, the applications often cost a substantial amount of money that has to come directly out of the pockets of undocumented applicants.

The only way to ensure meaningful opportunity and stability for undocumented college students and their families is through legislation that encompasses and protects all undocumented people currently residing in the U.S., offering them protection from deportation and a clear path to citizenship.

Enacting halting provisions that do not encompass crucial segments of the undocumented community and are subject to an immediate and unpredictable end in two years’ time does not constitute substantive progress on immigration. And as long as the country goes without substantive progress, undocumented students and their families continue to lose out. And the country continues to lose out on them.