Few youth in Hawaii, especially those from Asian countries, are taking advantage of the reprieve from deportation offered to unauthorized immigrants brought to America as children.
"Roughly 6,000 unauthorized youth in Hawaii are eligible to apply," said Jeanne Batalova, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. "Out of the 6,000, only 247 people applied. That’s a tiny rate of application."
Across the country, about half of those eligible — 49 percent — have applied for relief through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, better known as DACA. In Hawaii it is just 4 percent. Most applicants here, as across the country, are Mexican, although the majority of Hawaii’s foreign-born population is from Asia.
The policy was adopted in August 2012 by the Obama administration to give young people who have grown up in the United States a chance to keep studying or working here, after Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act. It offers a two-year, renewable reprieve from deportation to applicants with clean records who arrived in the country before age 16 and meet length-of-residence, education and other requirements.
Mahe Vakauta, a graduate of Campbell High School who came here from Tonga at about age 4, was among the first to apply, at the urging of immigration attorney Carmen DiAmore-Siah. Although Vakauta’s parents are lawful permanent residents and petitioned to keep him here, he was facing deportation after "aging out" at age 21.
Since graduating in 2006, he had pitched in on a relative’s orchid farm and helped build rock walls.
"Basically, I just went to church and stayed out of trouble," he said.
After being approved for DACA in December, the 25-year-old has been able to get a driver’s license and land a regular job.
"I’m a supervisor now at the company where I’m at," Vakauta said. "I have my own car now. Before, I had to catch the bus. Usually I’d be asking my family for money, and now it’s the other way around," he added with a chuckle. "It’s made a big difference."
He thinks many people don’t know about the policy or may be shy about pursuing it.
"In the Tongan community, bringing it up may be kind of shameful," Vakauta said. "It would be really hard for the younger ones to come forth and say, ‘I need to apply for something like that because I’m here illegally.’ I guess it’s a culture thing."
In the first six months of the program, 199 applications were filed from Hawaii, 63 percent of them by Mexican nationals and an additional 10 percent by Central and South Americans, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Just 19 percent were from countries in Asia, although three-quarters of the state’s foreign-born population is from that region, with the largest group from the Philippines.
"Nationwide, Asians apply at much lower rates than you would expect," Batalova said. "However, in Hawaii, because it is an Asian-majority state, seeing this situation is even more stunning."
Along with lack of awareness about the policy, some people may have trouble documenting their presence in the country or paying application fees. Some might prefer to keep a low profile, because they can apply for DACA defensively if they are threatened with deportation, Batalova noted.
Amy Agbayani, director of Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity at the University of Hawaii, reaches out to students traditionally left off the college track. She suspects many Asians don’t realize that DACA applies to them, although it can benefit them in various ways, including making them eligible for resident tuition rates.
"I think many in the community see this as a Hispanic issue, when actually there are undocumented people from many, many countries," Agbayani said. "But they see it as a Hispanic issue because that’s the largest and most vocal lobbying group at the national level."
Kevin Block, director of immigrant services for Maui County, has worked to publicize the law and helped many people apply. The immigrant population in his district includes many Filipinos, Latinos and Tongans, but it’s mostly the Latinos who have come forward on DACA, he said.
He suspects that Filipinos generally don’t qualify for it because they are in the islands with official permission. They have networks of relatives already here, and other avenues to gain permanent status such as through family reunification petitions, he said.
"If there were Filipinos that were eligible for DACA, then they would be applying for it because they understand immigration law more than most people," he said. "I have Filipinos that come into my office that ask me about the Child Status Protection Act, Humanitarian Reinstatement and things like that. They are aware of the remedies that are available. It just doesn’t apply to them."
———
For more information, visit www.uscis.gov/childhoodarrivals or call U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at 800-375-5283.
