 Good evening. Good evening and welcome. My name is Rogelio Sainz. I'm the Dean of the College of Public Policy and it is my pleasure to welcome you this evening to the College of Public Policy Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series. What we do with this lecture series is what we're trying to do is engage our speaker with people in our university community as well as in the larger community in the local area on major issues that are affecting our community and in our larger world in which we live in. So we try to bring in scholars, practitioners, policy makers to address these issues. And I'm grateful to the College of Education and Human Development for co-sponsoring this event and recognize my colleague Dean Betty Merchant for providing her support to this event. This evening we are honored to have with us Professor Michael Olivas who is one of the leading scholars in the area of higher education law in the country. Professor Olivas is the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston and he is also the Director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance also at UH. Professor Olivas is a highly prolific scholar and among his publications are 15 books that he has published including Colored Men and Hombres Aquí which dealt with the Hernandez case. No one documented child left behind in defense of my people, Alonso Esperales and the development of Mexican American Public Intellectuals and his latest book which was published by Johns Hopkins University suing Alma Mater which is on higher education and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has received many who's who honors and has held many, many who's who positions in prestigious organizations so I won't go into all of those. He is currently on the board of the Maldef Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and we are in for a treat this evening as Professor Olivas speaks to us on the very important issue of DACA on deferred action for childhood arrivals reform effects on undocumented students so with that I turn the podium over to my friend and colleague Michael Olivas. I'm so very pleased to have a chance to be here today and to meet at DACA Ground Zero with so many of you. The reason I have a cane is because I'm scheduled to have knee surgery and so I'm trying to work with the pain right now. I'm taking the pain like a man, badly, with whining and crying. I have a number of colleagues in the audience here. I'd like to recognize Dean Rogelio Sines and to thank him. I know it takes a village. He and his staff led by the able and scary Aaron. Thank you very much for pulling together all the coordination for this. My very first doctoral student is here, Professor Amari Noda who's on the faculty and I think one of my later graduate students, Professor Gloria Crisp, is either here or will be. I had dinner last night with President Ricardo Romo and his wife, two friends of ours, Professor Harriet Romo who's here today and I want to thank you for being here. I also have a lifelong friend, Father Bob Wright who teaches at the Oblate Seminary here in town. His mother and my mother, both Southern women, grew up, became best friends when we were young kids. I've known him much of my life and he's here with some of his students so I'd like to acknowledge them as well. I dedicate this talk tonight to the dreamers who've inspired and struck fear and awe into most of us. I know that I had the good fortune to be born here as a U.S. birthright citizen and I am a voracious consumer of my First Amendment rights. I've been inspired by you and the journeys that your family has made here and I welcome you to our community and I hope someday to be able to attend your citizenship ceremonies. In the meantime, you give us all great pride and I thank all of you. I do want to remind you that when you do get arrested, I don't practice in Texas and so I'm not able to represent you but I will try my very best to be worthy of the many sacrifices you and your families have made. I'd like to, speaking of having a best friend who's a Catholic priest, I actually studied to be a Catholic priest for eight years. It turned out that I was much better at afflicting the comfortable than I am at comforting the afflicted. I do find that things fall into threes for me and so I thought I would do three things for you tonight. The first is to talk about the various state actions, particularly the state laws that have been passed in anticipation of in-state residents and those kinds of issues. Many of you, of course, know about these but there are some who don't so I'm going to share some of these developments. Secondly, I'm going to do what every law professor does which is to talk about some of the cases that have arisen in this area. These are not all that well known but we're the direct, directly involved and I saw my friend David Inaosa from Maldef come in and he is one of your champions and is in court regularly to fight for your rights as well as all of us. Third, I'd like to spend some time talking with you about some of the problems that have arisen. Here I'm going to ask that you remember what happens in San Antonio stays in San Antonio. That is that you feel free as much as you can to be open with us to share some of your own experiences with us. For example, we're discovering any number of problems that DACA recipients have being hired and receiving the employment authorization to which they're entitled. I'd like to talk with you about some of these kinds of issues and while I don't have the answers I at least am beginning to understand some of these questions. Let me just say that there is not a day that passes that I don't hear from a dreamer. Sometimes they're thanking me, more often they're scolding me, but they're often engaging me at a level that I don't normally have with undergraduates. That is, I teach law students and I've had four research assistants who were undocumented at the time. Two of them are too old for DACA, but who would have thought when all of this was starting out that we would have an undocumented lawyer who was admitted to the bar in California in January? This is a truly remarkable turn of events. I spoke yesterday at the National Association, which stands for the American Association of Dental Colleges. I'm sure I'm not getting that right, but they had real concerns about how they could reach out to dreamers and DACA students and enroll them because of the obvious need for dental care in the Latino community, particularly the undocumented community. I think that there is a larger professional and personal interest that people have and it's one that's going to grow. But I will say that even if the Dream Act were to be passed tomorrow, which it's not, but if it were, we would still need to have all of these events occurring at the state level because many of these decisions about in-state tuition and financial aid and the like are purely state decisions. That is, the federal government has no role in these determinations. And I didn't know years ago when I helped draft the very first statute in Texas for in-state residents how it would grow because the opposition that I had received after speaking on this issue for a number of years was largely from Chicanos, including Chicano and Chicano legislators, who were afraid that if we reached out to Mexicanos that it would be a competition, in effect, with their constituents who actually voted. Now, I want to say that I think that the opposition that people had early on has dissolved and you find a large community of interests of people who have the larger Dream Act interests in mind and are involved in their service. I know any number of people who have been very committed and all of us, of course, hope that not only will the deportations be diminished by the absolutely smallest number possible, but that you will continue to try and encourage your younger brothers and sisters to enroll in DACA, which has had the transformative power that it has, and that you will continue to be examples so that other states will, in effect, take the lead from Texas. Who would have thought this in 1975 when the state of Texas enacted the statute that was later overturned by Plylar versus Doe that allowed school districts to charge undocumented parents' school tuition in a state where all of these children were still required by truancy laws to be enrolled in school? Who would have thought that in the year 2001 that it would be Texas who would take the lead on this and that it would have been a Republican governor who signed it into law and who has since been punished broadly for his involvement? When people ask me, well, are you a supporter of Governor Perry? I say, well, I'm a nonpartisan. I'm just as mistrusting of Republicans as I am of Democrats, and believe me, that's very deep-seated. However, if this were a political science convention, that line would have really killed. Let me just say, you guys are holding me to very, very high standards here. I said that even a stopped watch is right once a day, and that Governor Perry, who got beaten up in the Republican primaries, was very generous for his continued support of this, and I continue to believe that. Well, we've had tens of thousands of dreamers in the state of Texas who have not only attended college and who've become professionals and who more recently as DACA recipients have become licensed, but we invite all of you to do so and to encourage the estimated 300,000 potential DACA recipients who have not yet signed up, in part because they don't trust the government, probably with some reason, but who either don't know about it, or who can't afford the filing fees, or who have a small hit on their record, perhaps a DWI on their record. First, I believe it's impossible to graduate from college in Texas, certainly at UT and A&M, without a DWI on your record. When I started being involved in admissions in Texas, I saw all these students with MIPS, and I thought, boy, this is a highly educated state. Everybody who's applying to law school at the University of Houston, up to 6,000 people a year, have master's degrees in public policy. I thought, Rohelio, you're giving all kinds of degrees to people. It turned out, of course, it was minors in possession, but you can become a lawyer nonetheless. DACA says that you can't have serious misdemeanors, but I don't think that a DWI qualifies. I don't think it disqualifies, so I would consult with counsel. At the University of Houston, we have a DACA clinic every Friday, so if you are in need of counseling concerning your legal status and so forth, please do email me, and I'll be glad to put you in touch with a lawyer who will be glad to help you. As of today, we have 18 states that now have in-state tuition for the undocumented. 17 of these have state laws or statutes. Wisconsin had one and took it away, so we have 16 states that still have it. They repealed that, because of course, as you might imagine, they were overwhelmed with the undocumented. By my count, a total of 112 undocumented students went there. That's like a section of political science at the University of Wisconsin, but they did repeal that law, and there are two states, Hawaii and Rhode Island, that have done it by administrative practice, because federal law allows you to do it by state law, not just state statute. In addition, five states have enacted, as most of you know, financial aid provisions, including Texas, although one took it away, Oklahoma, so that California and Texas and Washington State and New Mexico all provide state financial aid, as well as in-state tuition. In addition, because of the way that many states organize themselves and leave individual admissions decisions, not to the state, but to the state institutions, there are a number of states that have recognized both undocumented students and virtually all states have recommended DACA recipients for in-state tuition, so that the University of Michigan, just as one example, does it, although other institutions in the state do not. Now it is true that you cannot receive federal financial aid, and that would be true even under the current version of the Senate law that has passed for the DREAM Act, but that's not a final draft that would be, if the House passed a version, it would have to go to conference, and my guess is eventually federal financial aid would be available as well. But think of it, in the years following 2001, one of which years, or the Texas did this before 9-11, after 9-11, notwithstanding that cataclysmic event that frankly turned many policymakers against international students, because five of the terrorists were in the United States on student visas, even so 17 states have gotten over that and have enacted practices for the undocumented, and as I say, even more for DACA recipients. That said, there are also six states who've said you can't come here and enroll at all, and so states such as Alabama and Georgia and South Carolina, a few others, states by the way, where there's an increasing number of Latino students, I would say not coincidentally, and of course you can imagine, and Arizona of course is the only border state that doesn't allow these students to enroll as in-state students, but you can imagine at least in Arizona, when they know, when they see a Mexican they know what they're talking about, how do you account for this nativism or restrictionism in a state such as Alabama? I have always found it really quite extraordinary that southern states, who after all know Mexicans only because they invite us to work there, that is US citizens and employers invite us to work there. It must be not because they share a border, but because they share an ocean, and they've heard that we're willing to cross anywhere and go anywhere. That line also usually kills, I gotta say. You get it guys, we share an ocean with Mexico. Okay, God, I even have some high school classmates who are here, and even they aren't laughing. This is a really hard crowd, I can see that. Okay, thank you Stephanie, I really appreciate that. Now, each of these states has its own legislative history that has led up to the enactment. So in Texas it passed unanimously, believe it or not, and there has been virtually no action other than a few state legislators who have ever tried to take this away. Now it is true that if you, I was scared, yesterday I watched the news in San Antonio, maybe it's different than it is in Houston, but the news suggests to me at least that even people running for offices that have nothing at all to do with immigration are against the documented. I find this extraordinary, people running for land commissioner. People running for offices that have nothing, the fact that you're land commissioner doesn't mean you're in charge of the land or immigration for that matter, and so I think that we're probably going to have to defend ourselves better and defend these kinds of things, and it may be that doing so will be a good thing because in states such as Maryland where the law was passed and then a ballot measure was brought so that the law was suspended, the people voted overwhelmingly for it at the next election so that it's now the only, Maryland of all places, the only state, a southern state that actually passed a ballot measure that led to this. All these others have been legislatures that have done it on their own for a variety of reasons with governors who've then signed it into law or as in Nebraska of all places where they overrode a veto of the state, of the governor who had tried to veto it and they still enacted it into law. Now, this is the good news, I have to say. The good news is that 18 states, and if we were to have Florida and Arizona we would have virtually all the states where the undocumented live. Now this doesn't say I'm willing to throw over North Carolina and other places where an increasing number of Mexican workers have gone there because of the low age jobs and the factories. Invited by US workers and employers who bring them there. So I would hope that every state would do it, but we have a pretty good quilt of all of the states where Latinos are living. So we have Washington and California. We have Texas and Illinois. We have New York. We have Rhode Island and Connecticut. Major states with substantial numbers of undocumented persons, both families and their children. And even four states, as I said, that have moved to giving full financial aid, the extent to which a state may do so. That is providing in-state tuition and financial aid is what states do even for their residents and citizens. So I think that we are faring pretty well. So while at the national level the anti-immigrant rhetoric has never been so great or so obvious, well it has been, but it has recurred and it is regular and it is profound. And because, frankly, some news channels have made it their business to try and draw attention to this, you continue to hear a great deal of nativist and restrictionist language. At the same time, we have this undercurrent, this undertow of state generosity that is unprecedented. Who would have thought that states such as Utah and Oklahoma and Nebraska and the others in the heartland, you expected in New Mexico, you expected maybe surprisingly in Texas and certainly in California, who after all passed a law to enable an undocumented lawyer to take his place at the bar there. But for whatever reason, and it's a mix of reasons in each state, to have 18 states that have moved in this direction is a strong countercurrent. And so when you feel discouraged, when you students feel discouraged that there's no one backing you, I simply have to say that you're wrong. And I say so with great respect, but I point to the long struggles by your brothers and sisters in these various states, as well as citizen brothers and sisters and others, policymakers who at great political risk, in some instances, remember how Governor Perry was treated so badly in the Republican primaries and he stood in the dock and took it. And he lost. Now he lost for a number of reasons, but certainly his support for immigration hurt him deeply and made very well, again, should he decide to run. So you have persons, so your support comes from unexpected quarters sometimes. And I think that it speaks to the larger political and human condition where we believe the narrative of undocumented children whose parents brought them here. And in our society, we simply do not punish children. Now the problem, of course, with this narrative is that it does demonize parents. And for that, I am truly sorrowful that this also means that we have deported more people than we ever have in history, almost 2 million people in the last five years, including citizen children who, of course, can then come back at the age of 18 and represent themselves. We do so because it is what our nation does with regard to immigration. That is, we have very generous programs and we admit millions of people a year, but we draw lines. And when I say we, I mean Congress here, but for the first time, we have extended deferred action to a substantial number of persons, over half a million of you have seen transformative lives, including some of you in this room who have already introduced yourselves to me. You can now get employment authorization. You can now get Social Security numbers. You can drive in most states. You can leave the United States and come back. I got an email this morning from someone who wanted to know if it were a good idea for her to take a European study tour. Who would have thought it? A document student asking me, she said she'd heard France was interesting and she wanted to go visit France. And I said, honey, France will still be there when you become a citizen. Don't go now because leaving the country for a full semester would constitute abandonment under DACA rules. Please don't go. Whereupon she wrote me back, as only a dreamer can, saying, well, I thought you'd be against me. I would hope more of you thought that was a joke, really. Honestly, I'm not against her. The rules are that if you're not a citizen and you're in deferred action, you can't leave the country for a substantial period of time. Don't try it. This is really a pendejo thing to do. It truly is because you have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stay here. And part of that is proving that you're a long-term resident, which you can. And there are people who are going to throw this away because they want to go to France. We have triple cream cheese here. We have pâté here. We even have French people here. Don't go to France. At least don't go for more than a week. Don't go. You can take your hours here. Study French if you want. Study Spanish. Study Latin. Study whatever it is you want. Just do it in the United States. Please don't go and lose this precious gift given to you because you want to see France. In other words, if you have DACA, hold on to it as the precious gift that it is. And try and turn around and get more people to have the same gift. Well, it's not always easy to tell which point I'm on. So I'm just going to say I'm about to enter my second point. And you're going, oh man, he's been going on and on. He's only on the second point. Well, the second point is that there's a lot of litigation about this. And as a law professor and a lawyer, this makes me very happy because we have brought challenges at almost every point. There have been, by my count, 11 state challenges to these state dreamer acts. And we have never lost a single one. There's still one kicking around here in Texas, Urcott v. Texas, in which Maldef is a participant as well as others. And that one is still kicking around. I think eventually we're going to win that one as well. Because these states carefully papered their way to their decisions. But there have been challenges to DACA. In Crane v. Napolitano, the employees of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, the employees who were charged with implementing DACA, brought a challenge saying this took away their discretion and it was unconstitutional. Now the judge actually showed some sympathy with them but said that it was a constitutional practice. And he upheld it. He struck down the challenge and upheld DACA. Which, if you really need it, is proof that there's a God. I'm sorry, Father Bob. Some of us just need more proof than others. Actually, I never needed more proof that there was a God than when I was in the seminary. But I now have it. The point is that this case lost. This challenge lost. There have been others, Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice and Common Cause v. Biden and others. And I urge you not so much to focus upon them as simply to be aware that this hard-gotten gain has been challenged because restrictionists and nativists do not rest. They will not rest until, number one, this president is removed from office. Now after eight years, I have every confidence he will be removed as every other president will be after eight years. But in addition, they want DACA done away with because this is a concession that we have lawful presence because you all now have lawful presence. You are considered to be lawfully present in the United States. And this entitles you to any number of benefits and status. It means you got a driver's license because the Texas State Law for driver's license is said, if you hold deferred action or are in lawful presence, you get a driver's license. Let me just say it didn't have to go this way. Maldef and others are in court right now in Arizona because Governor Brewer said that DACA is not deferred action. That is, she considers it unconstitutional no matter what. And she is not going to accord either in-state tuition or even driver's licenses. Now, eventually she's going to lose this case and she's going to pay us attorney's fees. Thank you very much, Governor. Just like Alabama lost when it drafted a law trying to keep the undocumented out that was so badly drafted that it would have kept out refugees who are lawfully in the United States. Now, here's the point. If you have one takeaway tonight other than, God, he sure looks like Jimmy Smith's. Honestly, it's a natural mistake. I understand. Okay. But here's the takeaway. Deferred action transforms persons into being lawfully present in the United States. And because of that transformative legal characterization, people who are lawfully present have new opportunities to gain benefits and status. And so while it's true that you're not eligible for federal financial aid, I believe that DACA students in many states are collateral that is independently eligible for financial aid because you are no longer undocumented once you gain DACA and keep it. So all of you be sure and renew it this next year when your year comes up, be sure you sign up again for it. You are no longer in an illegal status. You are no longer what Fox News and others would characterize as someone who's out of status, someone who is an illegal alien or worse, someone who's an anchor baby. Those terrible terms that I use only to show that while you weren't before, you certainly are not now because you have lawful presence in the United States. And while that doesn't allow you to adjust status and become a citizen, only comprehensive immigration reform will enable you to do that. You can, in fact, now move from state to state and get in-state residence after 12 months in a state that recognizes DACA, as most of them do. You're no longer bound to the state where you went to high school for three years and therefore had to stay in that state. Just a little footnote, by the way, it could have been so much worse. When we were drafting the original statute for in-state tuition, the original sponsors wanted to use ten years. And I said, we're talking about 17-year-olds. They said, well, okay, five years. I said, we're talking about 17-year-olds. I said, in Texas, high schools are organized with sophomore, junior, and senior year. Let's make it three. I said, after all, everybody else just has to be here 12 months. They were afraid that you and your families would come here simply to consume this higher education benefit. And I pointed out that that was not true, that all the data we had had from Pliler vs. Doe and all the information showed that these kids, your families, and you all know this, had been here for a longer period of time. And so they picked three years. You also are required in Texas to file an affidavit saying that you'll apply for citizenship should that opportunity come available. Have you ever heard of a statute that was less necessary than that, by the way? Can you imagine there's any one of you in this room that wouldn't run to become a citizen should you have the opportunity? Well, I know France still beckons you, but try and go to France and become a citizen if you think it's hard here. Well, that was my suggestion to split the difference because someone said, well, three years, they're still going to come here and there's going to be a lot of them. I said, well, they're not coming here to go to college. They're coming here because the parents want to provide a better life and to seek employment. And that's already illegal by federal law. So I said, why don't we just require that these students signed an affidavit? And they bought it. That's how this statute became law in any number of states. In fact, nine states have exactly the same language and use three years. New Mexico, my home state, where I convinced them that only needed 12 months, is the only state that has a 12 month requirement for the undocumented. And they gave them financial aid right off the bat. Too bad I wasn't a native Texan. I might have been able to sell it in that regard. As it happens, I am married to a Texan in what my father characterized as a mixed marriage. Just for the record, I married way above my head, as all of you who know my wife know. Now there have been other cases as well. By my count, as recently as this weekend when I pulled these data together, almost 20 cases bringing either challenges to the undocumented or the undocumented bringing challenges to certain issues such as in Arizona where we're trying to strike or people litigating on behalf of the undocumented or DACA recipients. And so here we have a status quo that is so much better than it was just 18 months ago. It wasn't until May of 2012 that we knew there would be such a program. On the very 30th anniversary of Plylar versus Doe, President Obama announced this. And three months later, we had this. And many of you have benefited from this. In fact, thousands of you in Texas have done so. At last count, which is six weeks ago, almost 700,000 had applied and over 500,000 had been granted DACA status. Those averages are astounding. Virtually no one has been declined. There's still some in turn around. And I still have some clients who haven't given all the information that's required. So it's been kicked back. And I still have some students who haven't been able to negotiate the price. But what I can't understand is how there could be anybody eligible for DACA who hasn't signed up already. What are you waiting for? It is not going to get better. In fact, as you know, there are a number of people who say if the administration goes in a different direction, it can be done away with entirely. Well, it wouldn't be done away with the people already in this status. It's renewable. But it could, of course, but it could be cut off tomorrow. Now, I think that it's a window that is shrinking. And if any of you have younger brothers and sisters or older brothers and sisters who haven't aged out of DACA, please sign them up and do so joyfully and comprehensively and quickly. Now, what does this leave us with? Certainly a much better situation than I could have reported to you 18 months ago. In fact, I wrote the very first law review article on DACA and I was skeptical. I said, these are students who are going to come forward and give all kinds of private information to the government. They're going to be known to the government in the legal terminology. And they're not even going to get employment authorization because it wasn't guaranteed. Well, it turns out every single person who has received DACA status has gotten employment authorization. This is so astoundingly different than the year before when only 10% of all deferred action applicants got employment authorization. In fact, substantial financial hardship was the requirement and it was held that these students were not likely to be that in that category. So even in the practice year that was held up, we didn't realize it was a practice year because we didn't know that DACA was going to come on board. We had substantial doubts, all of which have been erased. I have been to Damascus and I've been knocked off my horse. Now see, if I were talking to a seminary audience or completely Catholic audience, you'd all understand that biblical reference. I have seen the light and I urge you please to sign up for DACA. I also urge you, those of you who are finding that you are qualified for positions and you're being told by potential employers that they can't hire you because they have no guarantee that you'll have this status in the future, please find your way to an immigrant assistance agency because they are violating federal employment law. If you have employment authorization, you are entitled to be hired if you're qualified for that. Now it's true that they do not have to favor you over a similarly qualified U.S. worker but they cannot discriminate against you by virtue of any number of employment laws going back to 1986. And I understand that. I worked with, I had a client who got EAD and she came back to me and said, I interviewed with two agencies and they both told me and she named names and she had information and telephone numbers and she probably had DNA samples from the sweat. She was really good and she gave me this little memo and she said, I'm not a lawyer but I think that this is against the law because they told me that I was only going to have this status for two years and that even if I continued it and got it that they didn't have to hire me, they were afraid they were going to lose me. Well, that violates employment law and so if you're encountering these, please bring it to the attention of authorities. If you have, if you're trying to get an externship through the university and there are school districts or others who say, I'm sorry, we can't hire you, remind them first of all that externships are not employment, but that you are entitled to be employed and that they cannot say no to you. Report those as well. I found early on some school districts that considered this employment and I said, well, they're entitled to be employed and they said, well, we're just afraid that they're going to come in and investigate us. Well, I said, you ought to be able to withstand this because these kids have employment authorization. It's not with an asterisk, it is real employment authorization. You are as eligible to get a job for which you're qualified as I am a birthright citizen. So we need to work through some of these issues and we certainly need to work through some of the licensing issues. Right now there's a case in Florida, a case in New York and a case in California that was resolved concerning undocumented or DACA law applicants. But in fact, my own research shows me that there's only a dozen or so states, not including Texas, that do not require you to be a citizen or permanent resident in order to get a teaching license. It's just that they've never had any non-citizens who ever presented themselves with teaching credentials so as to apply for teaching licenses. And before when you couldn't work, having a teacher's license, did you know good? Because you couldn't be hired by a school district. Now you can be. And so why aren't more of us stepping up and challenging and getting ourselves the licenses, the professional licenses? This is equally true, I might add, for lawyers and for medical doctors and for dentists as well as school psychologists, school administrators, and school teachers in Texas. Many of these states have as a requirement that you be in lawful presence. Hello. Who has lawful presence? All of you do if you have DACA. And so more of us ought to be presenting our credentials for these licensing. And it may be that you're turned down, and it may be that you're not eligible. Maybe they found somebody who did better in her science than you did or whatever the field. But they can't do it because of your employment eligibility or authorization. So I'm going to bring this to a close by saying, close as far as my lecturing at you, by saying, those of you who have felt lonely and alone and singular and misunderstood, you probably were. But it's not because there haven't been thousands of persons who make it their daily work so as to improve your lot in life. And your obligation is to pay that back by staying in school, by remaining in lawful status, by helping others who weren't as lucky as you, particularly your own brothers and sisters, and by doing well in school, and by not giving employers any reason not to want you. In addition, I urge you to continue to push and to exact and expect more of us and more of policymakers. I urge you to continue to point fingers and to call people out on this. But you also have to cultivate professional and personal patience at a certain level. These reports that I'm making you today are truly earth-shattering. I know they don't sound very sexy, but to have an undocumented lawyer in California where within a week the state legislature passed a law specifically for him and the California Supreme Court admitted him and the state bar helped him navigate the moral character and fitness because he had aged out. And so he wasn't undocumented. That didn't happen on his own. None of us ever got where we were on our own. You are not on your own. And there are others who are even less well situated than you who need your assistance. And so it's important that you understand this, that you demand the rights that have come your way, that you remain law abiding and in lawful status and not give them any reason simply because you went to the Pearl Brewery one night and went out and got a DWI which could help you lose that status. Don't do that. It's not good policy. It's not good life. Life behavior. Don't do that. There are too many of us who are waiting for you to join our ranks as citizens to be as fortunate as we were by simple accident of birth that we were born on this side rather than on that side of a line. As my grandfather used to say, I didn't cross the line, the line crossed me. The line has crossed all of you. And I urge you to take your place and to act responsibly and to act on behalf of others as others have done for you. We're reminded biblically that those who have talents must use those talents. And you have talent. I'm going to end here and engage you with questions that you might have, answer questions. I thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and I want you to know that I have been given life and opportunity because of you and you have obligations now to do the same for others and to be the people that your brothers and sisters can look to for leadership in this regard. Thank you all very much for listening to me. We have a mic that will be passed around. If anyone has questions go ahead and raise your hand. Remember what occurs in San Antonio stays in San Antonio. I often have this effect on audiences or just stunned afterwards. Please come forward. My name is Olivia Lopez and I work here at the Mexico Center at UTSA and I've been approached by several people, young people who had the same characteristics as dreamers. They were brought here when they were young, they lived here most of their lives. The only difference really is that they weren't undocumented but they don't have any path to permanent legal permanent status and let alone citizenship because for whatever reason their parents were not able to process legal permanent residence for them and now they feel they don't have any options and I've heard some of them even say I wish I was undocumented. Is there any path for them? Is there anything that has been said about them? This is like answering the question are there any prospects from my brother who's not yet married, you know, he's not really marriage material. It's going to depend on the circumstances. Either you're undocumented or you have permission to be here. I mean that's really a bright line. Now there's a lot of people in this kind of catch-all category who might have asylum or something like that but for the most part either you have permission to remain here or you don't have permission in which case you're unauthorized. Now there may be some who are getting caught in a trap because they can't prove it. They were born to a portera in Brownsville, not really Matamoros and they can't prove it. I mean that's what lawyers do and I urge them to seek immigration counseling from the various groups including the state bar and others who provide that because I had a friend who grew up in Mexico and he thought he was Mexican. He'd worked in the United States on a visa and he wanted to become a permanent resident and move from a non-immigrant to... It turned out his mother had never told him because she was embarrassed. He was born in the United States out of wedlock. So I sent investigators to a hospital in LA and we found his birth certificate. It turned out he was a citizen all these years. He didn't even know it. So it's possible that people have more rights than they know but I would say for the most part it's a man of key and world. That is either... I certainly would not wish for someone to be undocumented. Let me just say that it may give your life great dignity but it doesn't give you any legal status and I don't wish it upon anybody. And most people who are undocumented are trying like mad to get out of that status. So I don't know why someone would wish that. Yeah. Well then they got their wish. They are undocumented. Yeah. Well depending on their age you can't age out. DACA like any other program draws a line and some people are too old and some people frankly came the wrong way. The reason that it's almost all Latinos instead of Nigerians and Chinese is because the way they get out of status is by coming here legally and then doing something like violating their immigration papers by working or staying too long or something like that. Whereas Mexicanos come by crossing the river or that ocean if you're going to Alabama to raid Alabama there's 112 that went to Wisconsin overwhelming the one political science class there. They may still have options. The undocumented student who became a lawyer is waiting in line because he aged out and couldn't be his father's a citizen. He couldn't become it because there are some technical... and those are the people I was talking about who sort of fall in the trap but they got their wish. They are undocumented. I misunderstood you. I thought you said that they wanted it, that they had legal status. But there may be other kinds of things. Let me just say love blooms a lot in immigration law. There are other ways, there's lots of ways to do it. All of them frankly quite legal and so I would seek counsel about that. They may have more opportunities than they think or they could discover like my friend that there actually were citizens all along. I don't know what happened all that often. But if your family Bible says that you were born in Brownsville or Laredo or El Paso or even better if it says you're born in what is I would look into that because there was a lot of movement back and forth across the border and it may have been that you were born in the United States and you could prove it. And family Bibles by the way can be authoritative in certain respects. So there may be more ways, there's lots of ways to skin this cat and that's not a large number of people though I have to say. This is why it's so important that people who have DACA understand they are no longer undocumented. The number of undocumented persons fell dramatically on a one to one ratio with people who got DACA. And so if we've now granted over almost 600,000 the next count I think it will be that many. That means we have 600,000 fewer undocumented persons. Now it doesn't mean that you're going to become citizens right away because it's going to take comprehensive immigration reform for that. But you're certainly better situated than you were before. And I urge you to make sure you fully understand your immigration status. This is why it would be so futile and counterproductive and counterintuitive to insist that you've got to go to France for the summer on a European study cruise. Just don't do it. Please don't do it. I appreciate the question. There are going to be some people who do fall in the cracks. And that's because we draw the, that's why we need comprehensive immigration reform. Well even then it doesn't guarantee that their situation will be remedied. Unfortunately sometimes people become ineligible by personal behavior, by having felonies, by having gang affiliations, by having other kinds of things that will make it very difficult for them. That's just going to happen. It's not, no country is perfect in that regard. In the United States for all of its imperfections is more generous than most nations. This side, there was someone else over here. The person in the front next to Stephanie. Yes. Hi, my name is Claudia Sanchez. I'm the president and the political science department. I just want to tell you I was one of the hunger strikers here in San Antonio in 2010. We were trying to get the votes for the DREAM Act to pass at the national level. And I just want to tell you that I remember during that time finding out that you had sent a letter to Congress, urging them to vote in favor of the DREAM Act. And that's why I tell you thank you for that. And on behalf of undocumented students and all the work that you put into this bill. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Can I quote you when somebody's quote starts holding me? Okay, sure, go ahead. It was a remarkable occasion. About 120 law professors got together at President Obama's request and suggested four different ways that he might do this and who knew he actually listened to us. And he enacted this and nobody was more surprised than I was. You know, sometimes you win. I remind you though with that political philosopher Frank Sinatra said that you can be riding high in April and shot down in May. That's my life. Yes. Yes, sir. My name's Kristen Barnett. I just had a question in regards to if for some horrible reason DACA would be repealed. Is there a grandfather clause in there and does it actually adequately protect the current recipients? Well, there's going to be at least one renewal period. If people hurry, there'll be at least one within the current administration. So I would foresee at least two years automatic on that if again provided you don't do anything to render yourself ineligible. It is virtually without precedent that someone with deferred action would ever be put into deportation. I do think that some of the terms of DACA might very well be altered over time. I can't imagine that they would be more generous. Let me just say that. That's why everybody ought to run, not walk right now. They could get less generous. And I think that would, you know, I don't want to predict something horrible just simply to get people to sign up for what they're now. I just don't know. I do think that it could, it was given by grace. It can be taken away by grace. That is, another president could say, no, tomorrow and not do it. And we would have, there would be no legal authority. I couldn't go to court and insist that the next president do so because this is entirely discretionary. I think that it would be hard to unring the bell of people. And again, I think that this narrative of sojourner children who have led law abiding and productive lives counts for something in the public discourse. And if this group had been a lot of drogeros and a lot of gang members and, you know, webones and underachieving people, we never would have been sold. You can't sell those goods. It's the fact that you have all achieved and made us so proud over time by being valedictorians and by staying clean and by doing all these, but that's what made it possible to advocate on your behalf. If you've got a really dreadful client, you can't sell them no matter what. Let me just say. So that narrative had real explanatory power and that's why I urge people to continue to adhere to it and to help others benefit from it. As to whether anything that's given in a discretionary fashion can be taken away. Now, I don't want to go out and give all the details of that and give anybody any ideas. Let me just say there are a lot of people who already have the idea and can't wait for that day and I will be fighting them tooth and nail with every legal method that I and others can bring to it. But anything given can be taken. That's why comprehensive immigration reform is necessary to have it made statutory so that it can't be repealed or challenged. Now that will still be line drawing. Let me say back to your question. What happens with someone who is 31 and they draw the line at 30 or whatever they do or if you can't have a DWI or even worse if they say you can't become a citizen, like you can only become a permanent resident. There are people who are considering that and who've seriously put that forward as an option. I don't think that we could allow that to happen but may work another. To some extent, having anything that allows you to say, that's why I'm so enthusiastic about DACA. You've got to take it one step at a time and that's why you all ought to embrace that realizing it's a way station in your own sojourn that your lives will have to continue and there'll be people who are in a position to support you and to fight for you. But what's given politically can be taken politically. I wasn't a political science major but I'm led to believe that that's a law. Like they say in Camelot, that's a legal law. That's a legal law. Couple more questions and then we're going to have a reception. Yes, Dr. Romo. Well, it hasn't kept almost 600,000 people from doing it. $485 doesn't seem like or 465. 465. Doesn't seem like a lot of money. I confess I've dropped that much on a date with my wife because I love her. And we've married 30 years and $465 is a lot of money. There actually is a provision that allows if you will seek legal counsel on that. There is a provision there that if you go to the frequently asked questions page that actually explains how you go about requesting that. It's been given in a discretionary fashion whereas DACA itself is being given automatically to anybody who's eligible. But there actually is some discretion in there and we've sought it for a couple of our clients in our DACA seminar, our DACA clinic. There are groups, I might add, church groups, refugee groups who have stepped up to the plate. There are some scholarship funds available that you can Google and find. I am continuing to find it hard to believe. I had some kids who came in to consult with me and they drive a better car than I do. Honestly, I drive a little Camry. I don't know what to make of that except to say that it is more money than I had hoped. It's less than it will cost to become a citizen under any scenario and so you better be prepared and save your money. But I have found that students today are enormously resilient and maybe DACA students who have become recipients can help others find the support. It's hard to believe in the city of San Antonio given the enormous generosity that has been here over the years that there's not some way to find that money. I understand, I believe that that plus the fear of coming forward to the government are the two reasons most often given. I haven't really studied it. I'm not a sociologist or demographer. I'll leave it to those of you who are doing this kind of stuff. But there's almost always a way to cope with this part. If you do have DWIs or gang affiliations and you're afraid, I still would seek counsel about the extent to which those can be dealt with properly with legal counsel. I had a guy who came in who had short sleeves on and I was afraid of him. He had tats. He had them on his neck, which I always, that's sort of where I draw the line. All my nieces and nephews have tattoos somewhere. This guy had something real bravo, I think it said. I don't think he was talking about the John Wayne movie. But then I talked to him and he talked like Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is one of the most fearsome people in the world. He talks with this lisp and his soft voice. And I think this guy was a heavyweight champion in the world. You can't go by what people look like. That was the lesson I took from that. And I helped him. He got DACA. He came back to me. He goes, prophet, I got DACA. I'm documented. And that was the first time I'd heard that. And I said, well, that's wonderful. Let's go out. He says, oh no. He says, I want to go tell my girlfriend. And my kid. Well, he hadn't told me about all the relatives. I find that my clients don't always, you know, Father Bob, it's not like confession. You know, they're not telling the truth all the way. And I don't give absolution. But almost all of this is possible. 600,000 kids have transformed themselves, including half of you in this room. It can be done. And you find a way. That's the best answer that I have right now on that. I'll take one more question. Well, scared you guys off. Oh, he gets the last question here. My question is in reference to the count, the countercurrent of the state's passing legislation support of the dreamers. You know, I'm having trouble accepting that state governments would do this solely on their will for doing good. Is there any other benefits that states are gathering from passing pro dreamer legislation? Really, I've never heard that. Honestly, I've heard almost every question. I continue to learn. I never thought it was because they were good guys. I mean, they pass all kinds of crazy laws too. And the week after Governor Perry, you know, got beaten up, he wanted to send the Texas National Guard down to Mexico. So that's why I say even a stopwatch is right once a day. They, we have invested because of Plylar versus Doe, a Texas case. We have invested in these kids, and it's time that we start recouping that investment. We don't want to cut them loose and send them back to Nicaragua or to Mexico, but these kids are poachos. They couldn't go back and face Mexico in many instances. Their relatives there have cut them off. They say, you want to go afuera y que manda, manda. You know, go seek their help. They are ours. I mean, it's the same reason that we fund schools. Not all that well. But it's the same reason we have financial aid. It's the same reason we have public colleges. Because we know that they're going to be ours at some point. You guys will be at the front of the line when it comes time to immigration reform. And you will get it, and you'll get it before your parents do. If your parents get it at all. And then you might be able to petition for your parents because you want to be at least 21 to petition for your parents. So if you become a citizen, you can go back and petition for your parents. This is what they mean by being an anchor baby, by the way. Now they mean it in a derogatory fashion, but the truth is that if you become a U.S. citizen, you can bring parents here as immediate relatives with no limitation, by the way. Now they have to be able to navigate and they're going to have to deal with the bar, the time bars for coming here. But once you become a citizen, everything is open to you, including your own family immigration reform. And so why do states do it? Because they are accepting that these kids are theirs. They've already invested in them. We prop up school districts about these states. They know that we're the future. We're going to be the social security providers for them. We're going to be the people who tend to them in their old age. If it weren't, the United States is so fortunate to have all these young people coming here because otherwise we would be Italy. We would be Japan. We would be China with all these old people and not enough young people coming there because they make it impossible to immigrate there. So Italy has this completely out of whack demographic profile. Why would California want to do that? It's expensive to do it now. But if you think that educating kids is expensive, try keeping them dumb. Try keeping them undocumented. Try keeping them not contributing. I think that you don't have to be a Nobel Prize winner to see that. That's the way that it's sold in the self-interest of the legislature. And they can count. They know that we pay taxes. They know that we not only pay taxes, we file taxes in many instances. And there's nobody more law-abiding than the undocumented. It's the Timothy McVeigh's, I fear, not the people who are coming here as immigrants. They came here because they wanted to be here. The rest of us are here because we were here. We're born here. I don't know any better. That's the way citizens are. People who become citizens are like my mother who left the Baptist faith to become a Catholic. She was like a reform smoker. Catholics are the best people in the world. That's why I became one. That's the way the immigrants are. You may think, yeah, it was great in Mexico. Well, you had that choice, and you came here. You manifested it. So don't go to France. Thank you all very much. A few closing remarks. I'd like to thank you very much for coming this evening. And we really had an engaging, stimulating, and very informative talk with Professor Olivas. And as part of your coming over, a small token of our appreciation. And if you can join me and give it to him. And a couple of other things. One, I'd like to thank Erin Jines, who is our development assistant. She's really my right-hand person and really does a great job organizing. And then we will have a reception just outside, right, Erin, right outside. So everybody's welcomed. And the last time we didn't have that many people, we said, no, we don't charge anything. It's free, okay? So it's out there as well. Free food. Free DACA! All right. Thank you very much.