Making Good on the Promise: Helping Out-of-School Mexican Immigrants, Farmworkers, and other Rural Immigrants Qualify for Deferred Action

Making Good on the Promise:  Helping Out-of-School Mexican Immigrants, Farmworkers, and other Rural Immigrants Qualify for Deferred Action

By Ed Kissam

Werner-Kohnstamm Family Fund

August 20, 2012

Overview

President Obama’s recent announcement of the DACA initiative (deferred action for childhood arrivals) holds great promise for immigrant youth and young adults. It provides them a means to begin working legally, pursue their personal and career development, and continue advocating for passage of DREAM Act so as to eventually find a clear-cut pathway to U.S. citizenship.  Immigrant advocates, service organizations, and civic groups have now been striving steadily for the past two months to develop the organizational capacity to help the large numbers of youth and young adults who are potentially eligible prepare and submit their applications (a process that began August 15).

The Migration Policy Institute estimates that two-thirds of the 1.76 million immigrants potentially eligible for DACA are of Mexican origin—about 1.17 million persons.[1]  Their report also estimates that, nationwide, about 350,000 of the youth and young adults who qualify for DACA in terms of age and residence are not currently enrolled in school and have not managed to get a high school diploma or GED. These educationally-disadvantaged but age-qualified potential applicants will need to enroll in an adult learning program in order to meet USCIS education requirements.[2] We estimate that at least 260,000 of these youth and young adults who can only qualify by enrolling in adult education are of Mexican origin.[3]

USCIS was thoughtful in articulating its guidelines describing the educational requirements that DACA applicants must satisfy.  In addition to meeting the program’s educational qualifications by having a college degree or high school diploma, or being enrolled in college, or high school, age-qualified young adults and teenagers can demonstrate they are “in school” by enrolling in a GED preparation program, a vocational training program, or another adult basic education program such as ESL or literacy instruction which is designed to lead toward employment or enrollment in post-secondary education. However, to actually benefit from this flexibility in the requirements of the DACA program, potential applicants who are not currently educationally qualified will require not only informational campaigns, application assistance workshops, and sound legal advice but, also, a national commitment to collaborative efforts to expand and facilitate access to adult education in the communities they live in.

These challenges are significant but the potential benefits are real and long-lasting. For Mexicans, but also for all young working immigrants, whatever their origin, deferred action and work authorization will have an immediate dramatic impact on their economic well-being and that of their families.  At the same time, for those who dropped out of school, re-connecting with adult learning programs prepared to provide “anytime, anyplace” lifelong learning support will have a profound long-term impact on their lives.

To be sure, the hundreds of thousands of young Mexican immigrants who are students, high school graduates, or college graduates will benefit from the heroic efforts of multi-ethnic networks of DREAMers such as United We Dream nationally. Here, in California, Educators for Fair Consideration, as well as their local allies have already begun to help tens of thousands of DACA-eligible teenagers and young adults put together applications and gather the documents to apply. 

However, organizations closely linked to Mexican immigrant communities can make distinctive contributions in one particular and distinctive area.  That will be in helping teenagers and young working adults who did not finish high school understand that they, too—not only high school and college students and graduates—may qualify for deferred action.   This is particularly crucial for the Mexican applicants because so many of them—e.g. farmworkers—never completed high school and are now working or searching for work full-time.

It will be important to consider carefully what roles organizations such as the federations of Mexican immigrants, clubes de oriundos, and other Latino-oriented service organizations can do to help their fellow immigrants succeed in securing deferred action status and work authorization as well as what they can do to catalyze cross-agency, collaboration among immigrant advocacy groups, schools, job training programs, family service providers, churches, businesses, and non-profit networks to help applicants navigate the overall process and, then, meet the education requirements of DACA.

Once Mexican working youth and young adults who do not have an educational diploma and who are not currently in school understand they can indeed qualify for DACA—by enrolling in an adult learning program—it will then be necessary for community organizations, civic activists, and service providers to advocate vigorously and work collaboratively with schools, community colleges, and non-profit education service providers to develop the adult learning opportunities these educationally-disadvantaged applicants need as part of their pathway to DACA and securing authorization to work legally.

Geographic Distribution-Urban/Rural DACA-Eligible Immigrants

More than half of the young, educationally-disadvantaged working Mexican immigrants eligible for DACA (perhaps 160,000) are concentrated in urban areas—Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Denver, and other large cities around the country.  However, more than one-third of the young Mexican working immigrants who do not yet meet the education requirements (perhaps 100,000) are farmworkers or other low-wage immigrant employees working in rural areas of the United States—as poultry and meat processing plant workers, construction workers, janitors, truck drivers, child care providers, gardeners, housecleaners, restaurant workers, retail clerks, or, even as proprietors of their own small businesses.[4] 

The most serious challenges faced by these DACA-eligible immigrants who need to enroll in an adult learning program will be those faced by young working adults, farmworkers and others (e.g. mothers with young children) in rural areas of the U.S. It will be crucial for immigrant advocates, educational institutions, farmworker service organizations, agricultural employers, concerned civic groups, community colleges, K-12 and schools in these rural areas to begin planning immediately and working collaboratively to build the service capacity needed to help these working youth and young adults who are potentially DACA-eligible but who do not currently meet the USCIS educational qualifications enroll in a school or educational program and, then, submit a successful application. 

An Estimate of Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers (MSFW’s) Potentially Eligible for Deferred Action (DACA)[5]

The vast majority (43,000 or 81% of all unauthorized MSFW’s eligible for DACA based on age and residence) do not meet the education requirements of DACA—because they do not have a high school diploma or a GED and are not currently enrolled in school.[6] A similar number of non-farmworker Mexican immigrants in rural areas of the U.S. are likely to be eligible—perhaps 48,000 all in all. Most of these rural Latino immigrants are of Mexican origin, although there are significant numbers of Guatemalan farmworkers also in the Southeast and immigrants of other national origins in some other rural areas of the country (e.g. Hondurans in North Carolina). We estimate that only 20% (i.e. about 18,000) of the out-of-school working-age Mexican-born farmworkers meet the DACA education requirements based on having a high school or college degree.

There are, in the farmworker households, a good number of relatives, friends, and extended family members who do not, themselves, work in agriculture.  These non-working, not-in-school but age-qualified rural residents include, for example, women raising young children, as well as others working in other sorts of agricultural jobs than crop/seasonal agricultural services (e.g. dairy workers, livestock workers, packing plant workers, truck drivers) or non-agricultural rural employment (e.g. in light manufacturing) or other work such as retail employment, restaurants, construction, road-building. Thus, the educationally-disadvantaged DACA-eligible population in the rural U.S. probably numbers at least 93,000.

Many of the DACA-eligible current farmworkers, since they came to the U.S. at an early age, are likely to speak English somewhat better than the overall farmworker population and, if they attended school at all in the U.S. before dropping out, may have somewhat higher levels of literacy.  However, it is likely that all are educationally-disadvantaged and that many have limitations in English.

More than half of the DACA-eligible farmworkers live in Pacific Seaboard states (California, Oregon, Washington) and about 20,000 of them reside in California.  Other areas with major concentrations of DACA-eligible MSFW’s include Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, Texas and Michigan in the Midwest, in the Northeast, upstate New York and rural New Jersey, and along the Atlantic seaboard states such as Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.[7] The distribution of the DACA-eligible rural population who are not MSFW’s is probably similar to that of the farmworker population.

Helping the DACA-eligible educationally-disadvantaged Mexican immigrants currently in the labor force access adult education

Federaciones, clubes de oriundos, LULAC chapters, NALEO, MALDEF, NCLR, as well as other networks and local community-based organizations can have a huge impact on the well-being of the DACA-eligible working immigrants in Mexican-origin and other ethnic communities, first, by spreading the word that DACA is not just for students; that it can benefit working teenagers and young adults also—if they came to the U.S. before age 16, if they are still under 31 years of age, and if they have lived in the U.S. for 5 years.

There is no reason to believe the legal situation of Mexican immigrants is significantly different than that of the urban immigrants but it is likely they may encounter more difficulties in documenting continuous residence due to the semi-formal arrangements typical in low-wage immigrant jobs where they are employed, especially in farmwork , as well as the informal nature of living arrangements in communities with crowded housing and complex households.  The Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores has already been proactive in encouraging consular offices to collaborate in workshops in DACA and in facilitating and expediting applicants’ requests for birth certificates, identity cards, or other crucial documents.  However, Mexican state offices of migrant affairs can and should work equally hard to remove whatever barriers there may be to securing home-country documents.

USCIS, quite reasonably, noted in its guidelines that it would expect that those granted deferred action based, in part, on their enrollment in an adult learning program, would achieve their educational objectives—a GED, or enrollment in vocational training, community college, college, or training-related employment—at the point they applied for a renewal.  Community-based organizations can make valuable contributions in advocating for well-designed course offerings from adult schools, community colleges, and vocational training programs, which can both satisfy USCIS’s legitimate desire for adult learning program enrollment to be substantive and focused on employment and which recognizes the distinctive learning needs and goals of working immigrant adults.

Access to the sorts of adult education courses required to qualify for DACA varies from state to state but service capacity is likely to be, generally, much more constrained in rural areas than in urban areas.  Therefore, a high priority will need to be coordinated and collaborative efforts among immigrant advocacy groups, non-profit farmworker service providers, to rapidly increase service capacity. These efforts will need to be coupled with vigorous advocacy in states (e.g. Georgia, Alabama) which seek to bar undocumented immigrants’ access to adult education and community college programs and, within immigrant communities themselves, ongoing campaigns will be needed to refer potential DACA applicants to high-quality educational institutions which offer courses meeting USCIS expectations (i.e. leading toward a GED or vocational training or employment).[8]

Ideally, efforts to make new education system service capacity available to DACA applicants in rural areas would be focused on creating course offerings tailored to the learning needs and personal objectives of farmworkers.  For example, vocational ESL courses offered by K-12 adult schools or community colleges would be likely to both meet USCIS requirements and provide farmworker youth and young adults a first step upward on a career ladder which would improve the stability of their earnings (either in agricultural employment or elsewhere).  GED courses crafted specifically to prepare students to take the GED in Spanish might be useful for some groups of DACA-eligible farmworkers.  California, Oregon, Washington, and Florida, at least, have well-developed community college systems which can play a particularly valuable role.  But local K-12 school systems which, for example, in California, bear primary responsibility for offering adult basic education and ESL courses can play an important role also.

Potential Roles for Programs Targeted to Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers

The challenges farmworkers face are great—but some unique resources are available to help them. There have now been, for more than 50 years, a range of federally-funded programs targeted to serving the needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFW’s). Originally, these programs supported multi-service community-based organizations which emerged as a way to respond comprehensively to the special needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers.  Now, half a century later, these programs are delegated to distinct organizational service networks. Each of these could, if it wished, play a unique and valuable role in making the dream of deferred action and upward educational mobility a reality.  However, to do this as effectively as possible, it would be valuable for federal, state, and local administrators, managers, and program planners recognize how support to DACA applicants relates to their core mission, proactively explore role(s) they might individually or collectively play in helping MSFW applicants for deferred action enroll in adult learning programs, and, then, reach out to offer support to farmworkers and their families in applying for DACA.

Key MSFW program networks which can immediately provide assistance to farmworkers in applying for DACA include the following[9]:

Migrant Education programs—Funded at around $390 million per year, these programs, funded by federal grants to states and by states to local school districts or consortia of districts, Migrant Education grantees are authorized to serve migrant farmworker families, irrespective of legal status.  Their service population includes both students currently enrolled in K-12 schools and out-of-school youth and young adults up through 21 years of age.  Migrant education programs can and should offer orientation to the DACA provisions, application assistance, and fund VESL and GED preparation programs tailored to the learning needs of out-of-school DACA-eligible farmworkers up through the age of 21.  Naturally, their role should also include student counseling and orientation explaining the immigration-related benefits of school enrollment and high school completion within the context of DACA for students currently in school.

Migrant and Seasonal Headstart programs—Funded at a level of about $250 million per year, MSHS programs are typically operated by community-based organizations.  With more than 400 sites around the country, the MSHS programs can play an extremely valuable role in informing farmworkers of the provisions of DACA—because the demographics of the farmworker parents of pre-school children enrolled in MSHS programs correspond, to a significant extent, to those of the DACA-eligible age group, i.e. farmworkers under the age of 31.[10]  MSHS grantees playing such a role is facilitated by the overall Head Start program design which gives attention not only to pre-schoolers’ development but, also, to family resiliency.

National Farmworker Jobs Program grantees—Funded at a level of about $78 million per year, the NFJP grantees have a long history of serving farmworker families and providing them employment training.  There are statutory constraints on NFJB grantees enrolling unauthorized farmworkers but they can, nonetheless, play a valuable role in orienting farmworker communities to the DACA provisions as part of their broad outreach activities.  Once DACA applicants receive work authorization they can then enroll in federally-funded vocational counseling, ESL, literacy, and employment training programs.  Because of their expertise in employment training the NFJP grantees may be able to play a valuable role in working with local community colleges and K-12 adult schools to design VESL and other employment-oriented training programs for farmworkers which will both meet USCIS requirements and provide solid learning environments where farmworkers can be successful.

TRIO Programs—Designed to support upward career mobility and to focus on rural areas as well as disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods, these programs have the potential to be valuable partners in efforts to rapidly design adult education service networks to respond to DACA-eligible farmworkers’ needs.

In Summary

A greatly-expanded network of adult education opportunities will be crucial in providing assistance to about 350,000 young immigrants, 260,000 of them of Mexican origin, who will need to enroll in a GED preparation, employment-oriented adult education, or vocational training in order to qualify for deferred action.  Among these educationally-disadvantaged  young immigrants there are an estimated 100,000 rural residents, farmworkers and others, who will faced especially serious challenges in accessing adult learning programs—due to lack of service delivery system capacity, distance.  

The proactive involvement of a broad range of community-based organizations can make a huge difference in explaining to the young DACA eligible immigrants who dropped out of school (to work or to raise children) that they, too, may be able to qualify for DACA by enrolling in an adult learning program.  Local, state, and national collaboratives relying on a mix of federally funded activities, foundation-funded initiatives, and other local sources of funding (including contributions from small Latino businesses, agribusiness, and major corporations) can make the difference in determining whether the promise of deferred action can be transformed into a reality for the immigrant out-of-school working youth and young adults who have not yet had an opportunity to complete their education.

END NOTES

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[1] Jeanne Batalova and Michelle Mittelstadt, “Relief from Deportation: Demographic Profile of the DREAMers Potentially Eligible under the Deferred Action Policy”, August, 2012. 

[2] See USCIS web page at www.uscis.gov/childhoodarrivals/

[3] MPI estimates that 65% of all DACA-eligible immigrants are of Mexican origin.  No estimates have been published of the numbers of the age-qualified DACA-eligible Mexican immigrants who are not currently in school and who do not have a high school or other degree.  However, based on the overall profile of the Mexican immigrant population—which includes disproportionate numbers of school dropouts and/or youth who came to the U.S. before the age of 16 and who may have never attended school in the U.S., we estimate that Mexicans make up about 75% of the age-qualified but not currently educationally-qualified potential applicants.  See Deborah Reed, Laura Hill, Christopher Jepson, and Hans Johnson, “Educational Progress Across Immigrant Generations in California”, Public Policy Institute of California, 2005.  The authors note that Mexican immigrant youth who came to the U.S. are more likely to directly enter the labor force than others.  Based on decennial census data the authors report that only 36% of the 1^st-generation Mexican immigrant youth in California finish high school, compared to 83% of Vietnamese, 95% of “other Asian” youth, 93% of Filipino, and 47% of Central American youth.

[4] In two rural agricultural communities with high concentrations of immigrants studied in the 2001-2006 New Pluralism research conducted by JBS International as part of the USDA’s rural community development research initiative (Arvin, CA and Woodburn, OR) between one-third and two-thirds of the immigrant population worked in low-wage non-agricultural non-professional occupations.  See Ed Kissam, “Migration Networks and Processes of Community Transformation: Arvin, California and Woodburn, Oregon”, Journal of Latinos and Latin American Studies, Winter, 2007.

[5] This is a conservative estimate based on the ETA/DOL’s consensus of a U.S. farm labor force of 1.4 million farmworkers working in “seasonal agricultural services”.  This estimate does not include livestock or dairy workers or workers in other sorts of agriculture-related employment such as poultry or vegetable processing which are, also, concentrated in rural counties.  Moreover, as farm labor expert, Phillip Martin pointed out in a recent paper for a Farm Foundation discussion (“Human Capital in U.S. Agriculture”, July 10, 2012) there remain uncertainties about the ratio of currently-employed to temporarily-unemployed farmworkers, i.e. the peak-trough ratio. Some analysts believe there may be closer to 2.2 million migrant and seasonal farmworkers, imply 50% more DACA-eligible immigrants than in our estimate here.

[6] Based on analysis of National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS) data 2007-2009.  The NAWS provides a highly reliable basis for this estimate because the dataset includes information not only on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics but, also, on immigration status. Because the DACA-eligible farmworkers are a relatively small sub-population within the overall U.S. farm labor force, there are some uncertainties as to whether the number is higher or lower (as is the case with the Pew and MPI estimates) and the estimate here is the mid-point.

[7] The definitive national distribution of DACA-eligible MSFW’s varies from labor market to labor market.  Relatively more of the farmworkers in the Western Migrant Stream are unauthorized (61%) and in the Eastern Migrant Stream (51%) than in the Midwest.  See Susan Gabbard, Daniel Carroll, and Russell Salz, “How is the Farmworker Population Changing? What Does This Mean for Health Clinics”, presentation to Western Migrant Stream, January, 2009. 

[8] See, for example, Valeria Fernandez, “Arizona Denies Dreamers GED Classes to Block Deferred-Action”, New America Media, August 20, 2012.  In contrast, California’s AB 540, has had a positive impact by allowing DREAMers to pay in-state tuition for community college courses and AB 131 will help still further by allowing DREAMers, including low-income DACA applicants to request fee waivers for community college courses.

[9] Non-profit organizations and local agencies implementing these programs often receive core funding from the targeted federal MSFW programs but, also, have additional sources of state, local, foundation, and private sector funding.

[10] See Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, “2012 Report: Migrant and Seasonal Heard Start Supplement to the National Agricultural Worker Survey”, March, 2012.