Should I mention my undocumented status in faculty applications? I am looking to apply to several junior faculty positions this Fall and Winter. Many positions allow you to submit an optional diversity statement where I had intended to discuss my undocumented legal immigrant status. I have DACA so I am eligible to work in the USA without visa sponsorship but this is contingent on continued DACA renewals, which used to be 2-year fixed terms but has since been reduced to annual renewals.
Undocumented immigrants in the academic field are extremely sparse, far below the national averages for bachelor's, master's, and PhD attainment, and as you might expect, almost non-existent among professors. This seems like a good point in terms of advancing diversity but at the same time, my concerns are whether universities would even bother to look at someone like me whose employment status is not guaranteed in the long run, especially under the current US administration.
From a faculty search committee standpoint, would someone who is undocumented/DACA-mented be a red flag?
From my experience with faculty searches, departments at first care only about whether a candidate is actually good. That is the key basis to form a short list, and only after that do they care about the practicalities of hiring someone. These practicalities includes salary, spousal accommodations, visa status, etc.
As a consequence, I think that your immigration status is not going to be much in terms of an obstacle for getting onto a short list and, potentially, getting an offer. Your problems will of course start after that: is a university willing to actually hire you given the not entirely settled legal status of DACA. I'm not an expert on this part, so if you say that you're eligible for employment, then I will assume that universities see it the same way and that your major obstacle then must be to get onto the short list and getting an offer -- for which the only criterion really is that you are better than the competition.
Implied in your question is whether you should mention your status in the diversity essay. That would strike me as odd: The fact that you are in this category makes you no better qualified than someone who is in the US on a visa or, since you have spent the majority of your life in the US, anyone else who has grown up here. As a consequence, I think that there is nothing to be gained from mentioning your DACA status -- thought it is conceivable that it raises questions on the minds of faculty similar to the ones you mention in your question.
In summary: My suggestion would be to just not bring up the DACA status at all in application documents, and only mention this once you have a conversation with the department head about actually getting hired. That is the point where the prospective employer needs to know about it, but no earlier than that.