May 18, 2016
Page 7
O
PINION
Hope is Waiting for the Supreme Court
Speaking up
for our brothers
and sisters
M arian W right e delMan
The futures of mil-
lions of immigrant
families are on hold un-
til the Supreme Court
makes a decision in
U.S. v. Texas expect-
ed in June. Texas and
25 other states iled a
lawsuit in February 2015 to block
President Obama’s November
2014 executive action to help
keep immigrant families together.
The Deferred Action for Parents
of Americans (DAPA) and Lawful
Permanent Residents and expand-
ed Deferred Action for Child-
hood Arrivals (DACA) initiatives
would help parents and young
adults remain in the country tem-
porarily to work, further their ed-
ucation, and support their families
The story of Baldo who came
to the United States from Mexi-
co in 1988 when he was 17 years
old and who lives in Pasadena,
Calif. with his wife and their two
U.S. citizen daughters is docu-
mented in one of the nine friend
of the court briefs iled on behalf
of more than 1,000 organizations
and individuals supporting the
president’s executive actions.
The Children’s Defense Fund
joined 75 other education, health
by
and child advocacy organizations
in one of these briefs. The Na-
tional Immigration Law Center
says the multiple briefs in this
case “demonstrate the severe, na-
tionwide harm — to millions of
individual families, to the safety
of our communities, and
to local and national eco-
nomic well-being — pro-
duced by the injunction
barring implementation
of the Obama administra-
tion’s DAPA and expand-
ed DACA programs.”
The deferred action order
would allow immigrant parents
like Baldo, with citizen children,
to seek protection from deporta-
tion, get a work permit, and keep
their families together.
The brief shares more about
his story: “Baldo’s inancial dif-
iculties are compounded by his
fear of being forced to return to
Michoacán, Mexico, where he
has not lived in nearly 30 years.
He has heard from family mem-
bers about kidnappings and oth-
er drug cartel-related violence,
and would not feel safe returning
to Michoacán. Given the risk of
harm, he would not want to take
his daughters there, but he also
would not want to be separated
from them.”
An estimated 16 million peo-
ple in the United States have
mixed-status families like Bal-
do’s. One in ive undocumented
immigrant adults have a U.S.
citizen or lawful permanent resi-
dent spouse and about 3.8 million
undocumented immigrants have
children who are U.S. citizens.
Deportation can result not only
in separation of children from a
parent but also food insecurity,
challenges in accessing health
care, housing instability, and
sometimes entry of children into
foster care. Families lose the i-
nancial stability provided by their
formerly employed parent and
the local economy suffers lower
tax revenue. The very real threat
of a parent’s removal is causing
millions of U.S. citizen and law-
ful permanent resident children
emotional, psychological, and
educational harm.
DAPA would allow a parent
like Baldo to return to his former
job and stay with his family for at
least three years without fear of
deportation, with the opportunity
for renewal.
By expanding DACA, the De-
partment of Homeland Security
would offer deferred action to
more young people brought to the
United States as children before
their 16th birthday. They must
have continuously lived in the
U.S. since January 2010 and ev-
ery day since Aug. 15, 2012, have
a high school diploma or equiva-
lent, or be in school. They would
have access to important educa-
tional opportunities, internships
and career and vocation training
and have better chances of new
jobs and increased earnings. The
state of Texas’ injunction pre-
vents an estimated 290,000 peo-
ple brought to the country as chil-
dren from applying for DACA.
Qualifying for these tempo-
rary, renewable deportation de-
ferrals requires people to meet a
variety of requirements and pass
a criminal background check. In
recognition of the beneits for
children and families and the eco-
nomic future of our country, there
is very broad support for DAPA
and expanded DACA. Sixteen
states and the District of Colum-
bia; 116 cities and counties, along
with the National League of Cities
and the U.S. Conference of May-
ors; 51 current and former chiefs
of police and sheriffs and the
Major Cities Chiefs Association
and Police Executive Research
Forum; 326 immigrants’ rights,
civil rights, labor, and social ser-
vice organizations; a bipartisan
group of former members of Con-
gress; 225 current U.S. senators
and representatives; and former
federal immigration and Home-
land Security oficials have iled
friend of the court briefs in the
Supreme Court.
Let all of us break our silence
and speak up about the suffering
of our sisters and brothers whose
family members are at risk of be-
ing torn apart by deportation.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.
Nonviolence Superior to Violence in Every Way
Consider the
research and all
the costs
t oM h. h astings
I teach and write in
the ield of Peace and
Conlict Studies, with
a special focus on stra-
tegic nonviolence. It is
a rich ield, growing in
its scholarship and its
widespread usage. I’m
so enthused by this—
the more we wage our conlicts
with nonviolence the lower the
costs.
Counting the costs of conlict,
we normally think of blood and
treasure, of casualties and ex-
pense. We are slowly beginning
to also count other costs, includ-
ing our environment, our relation-
ships, our civil rights, our human
rights, our metrics of democracy,
and more. Nonviolence is superi-
or to violence in every way if we
by
read the research and consider all
the costs.
Nonviolence can fail, of course,
and in the most robust of strug-
gles—trying to overthrow a dic-
tator, for example—nonviolent
struggle only works about 53
percent of the time. Of
course violent insurgency
only succeeds 26 percent
of the time, about half
as often as does nonvio-
lence. This is disturbing
to those who deine rev-
olution as violent. I hope
they get over it. Wake up
and smell the lowers instead of
the cordite.
One secret to nonviolent suc-
cess is communication. When we
are quiet the injustices we see or
suffer are allowed to continue.
When we are aggressive—vio-
lent or demeaning, threatening,
and insulting—that strengthens
the resolve of the opponent and
progress is unlikely. The best path
to victory is assertion—visualize
a thin bright line between you
and the oppressor. Shrink back
from the line and nothing chang-
es. Charge over the line and all
defenses spring into counter-ag-
gression, counterattack. But go up
to the line with insistent civil as-
sertion, creative and resilient, and
your chances for winning your
objectives are radically increased.
These principles are basic, but
ignored all too often, as we see in
many conlicts domestic and trans-
national, in families and work-
places, in neighborhoods and in
towns, in regions and states. The
destructive, adversarial conlicts
that result are often heartbreaking
to observe.
From a belligerent North Kore-
an dictator to a misogynist Donald
Trump, the results are not impres-
sive. Ruling over others is a poor
path to sustainable gains and do-
ing so in an aggressive manner
will only generate pushback. If
that resistance is civil but insis-
tent, assertive but not aggressive,
it can achieve what no one thought
possible.
If I had predicted publicly in
1985 that the Philippines would
see Marcos deposed without a
single ired shot, that the Ber-
lin Wall would fall in a massive
nonviolent uprising, that Nelson
Mandela would be liberated and
apartheid would end without a
widely predicted bloodbath, that
Pinochet would fall in Chile to
mass nonviolent power, and that
Slobodan Milosevic would cre-
ate horriic wars in the Balkans
but would be deposed by nonvi-
olence, I might have been diag-
nosed as delusional.
These cases and 1,000 more
are chronicled in a Swarthmore
database that is growing con-
stantly. We are humans—we have
great big brains that are hard-
wired for all possible responses,
from violent to nonviolent, which
makes us the unique species neu-
rologically capable of ininite,
illimitable choice. Let’s be wise
about it.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is found-
ing director of PeaceVoice.
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