For months, Democratic politicians have been attending dinners where they get to know a family that would benefit from the deportation relief provided by President Obama's proposed immigration actions. It's a chance for lawmakers to hear how those programs—DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Residents)—could ease the ever-present fear of undocumented families if Obama’s actions weren't being blocked by a legal challenge from 26 Republican governors and attorneys general. (The Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case, U.S v. Texas, on April 18.)
Last November, presidential candidate and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley did an inaugural "DAPA dinner" with a Texas family. This week, Rep. Don Beyer sat down with a Virginia family of five, the Pintos, including two undocumented parents, two undocumented children (one covered by DACA) and one child a citizen who was born here in the U.S. Esther Yu-Hsi Lee was there:
Palpable tension hung over the meal as the family explained that their youngest son, 8-year-old Christian, is the only family member with U.S. citizenship. Christian could be the only one left in the country if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency officials came to the Pinto home with final deportation orders.
The conversation broke into natural laughter with Christian leading many of the jokes about hoverboards, video games, planets — all topics on which he was an expert. But even he stopped smiling and began pushing around the food on his plate when his father, Jerry Pinto Sr., told the congressman about his journey across the southern U.S. border in 2004 in search of better economic opportunities for his family. Now he’s a construction worker — but he lives his life cautiously, afraid of getting pulled over by local law enforcement who may choose to turn him over to the federal immigration agency. His wife is in a similar boat, living in fear of being reported to immigration officials.
Christian, unfortunately, isn't the only American child who faces this situation. An estimated 5.3 million children in the U.S. have undocumented parents, with the vast majority of those kids being born here, just like Christian. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that half a million parents of a U.S.-citizen child were deported between 2009-2013.
Rep. Beyer already supports immigration reform, but he challenged anti-immigrant Republicans to spend an evening with a family like the Pintos, get to know them and see just exactly what kind of damage GOP policies are doing to them.
“I would say that they just don’t understand the problem,” Beyer told ThinkProgress after the dinner. “It shows no compassion at all. As with this family, the youngest is a U.S. citizen born here. Another one has deferred action status. The parents have no papers. And yet we don’t want to break them into three or four different pieces, or even two pieces.”