In Walz, some rights groups and policy experts see an opportunity for immigration change

Immigration activists and foreign policy experts are weighing in on Tim Walz — the Minnesota governor tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.

Immigration and border issues are again at the forefront of this year’s presidential election. Meanwhile, federal courts are deciding the fate of key immigration policies like DACA — the Obama-era program that gave hundreds of thousands of undocumented people brought to the U.S. as kids temporary protection from deportation.

Phoenix DACA recipient Jose Patiño is the vice president of education and internal affairs at the immigrant advocacy group Aliento. He says as an Arizonan, he was disappointed not to see Sen. Mark Kelly on the ticket, but Walz has a strong history of working with recipients in Minnesota.

“For example, Minnesota was the latest state that allowed undocumented individuals to get drivers licenses, that’s something that has been very important to the community. He has also supported DACA recipients, so overall we’re more hopeful as a community now than a month ago,” he said.

Walz has written letters of support for the DACA program and undocumented students are also eligible for his state’s free tuition program for lower-income families.

Arizona voters passed a similar measure in 2022 that opens up in-state tuition rates and state scholarships to DACA recipients and undocumented students. Patiño says he hopes to see those efforts on a national scale.

“Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia offer in-state tuition [to undocumented students],” he said. “Our hope is that we can get every single state … because we constantly hear calls from students in Georgia and Oklahoma and Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana who are like, ‘you were able to do it in Arizona, a traditional conservative state. How can we do it here in our state?”

Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, says Walz voted along party lines on foreign policy bills during his 12 years in Congress.

“Bills having to do with free trade agreements in Columbia and Peru, or controls on military assistance, or condemning a successful military coup in Honduras in 2009,” he said. “There were … pretty much no exceptions where he would have rebuffed what the liberal lineup of what the Democratic Party would have been, which was pro-labor, pro-democracy, pretty strong line on human rights and also for at least some engagement with Cuba.”

Isacson says to win more votes among progressives, the Harris-Walz ticket should focus on the benefits of immigration and the sanctity of the right to asylum.