DACA and Dreamers: Why It Shouldn’t End
Imagine coming to the United States with your parents as a child. You were told that you were going to Disney for the weekend. That’s what you were told to tell the lovely flight attendants. In reality, you were escaping a country that wants to harm you and your family.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, is an immigration policy that allows children who were brought to the country illegally to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit.
Those protected under DACA are called Dreamers. To apply, they must have been younger than 31 on June 15, 2012, when the program began, and “undocumented,” or lacking legal immigration status.
The Trump administration wants to end DACA — an Obama-era solution — ripping up millions of families with the potential of being deported. This will underscore Trump’s top priority, which is to build a wall between the Mexico and United States’ border. His demand for $5 billion to build the wall has been the focus of an end-of-year drama in Washington that could lead to a government shutdown.
DACA and Dreamers make the United States what it is. There needs to be a stop on people who think that the children coming to the United States will not contribute to the country and let them seek asylum for a better future.
In recent months, I had the opportunity to work with Erich Dias at Sun Broadcast Group. Dias is also attending Florida Atlantic University in pursuit of a bachelor’s in hospitality management.
Born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil, Dias’ parents got divorced when he was 5. After winning custody of him and his brother, Dias’ father had dreamt of coming to the United States.
“We grew up in São Paulo and it was rough and wasn’t a good place where we lived. He wanted us to have a better life than he had,” said Dias.
Dias described his experiences that finally got his father to make the move at 11, when they had saved enough money.
“I’ve definitely seen dead bodies around the neighborhood,” said Dias of his childhood neighborhood. He said luckily he never got robbed. “Pretty much everybody I knew was either robbed at gun or knife point.”
Thanks to former President Obama, he was able to be under the Dreamers as of age 15. Since he never committed a crime, through the process, Dias was able to get a social security card, pay taxes, apply for a work employment card. Finally, he was able to work and to give back to the country. Dias also sometimes needs to send money back home to support his family in Brazil.
DACA recipients are able to contribute back to society. Sadly, there is little being done to protect this program. As of 2017, there are currently 690,000 DACA recipients and about 72,000 are in college. Cutting these recipients off, especially in college, will ruin the dream of thousands of young adults.
Jeff Sessions, former attorney general, announced in September 2017 that DACA would end. As of this August, district court judge, John D. Bates, said it is unconstitutional. For the time being, the program remains in place as litigation proceeds.
Children should not fear where they grow up and the surrounding neighborhood. If they come to the United States with their parents seeking asylum, we as a nation should accept them willingly and give them all the opportunities to see them grow here.
“My parents have degrees in business, but they don’t mean nothing here. My dad is a computer engineer and he delivers food and creates websites now. My mom was an accountant, and she cleans houses,” said Dias. “Do you think that’s what my parents want to do?”
There needs to be a change from here on out. We need to consider the future for DACA recipients and a stance must be taken. The United States of America was and is founded by immigrants. If we abandon this, we should no longer be considered a democratic nation.
