DACA: Thoughts On a Bill That Gave Dreaming a Chance
Imagine you are six years old. The world is just beginning to make sense of itself: you recognize your home from the car window as it gets smaller and smaller in your view, you make friends and finally remember the phonetics of their name, you know the sky burns blue, sometimes a deep shade of orange. And then imagine leaving your home, your friends. The sky is the same color in this new place but nothing else is constant. No one sounds like you, their names no longer roll off your tongue, but get caught in the back of your throat. Words don’t sound like words anymore, and you don’t know the “why” of it all. This is a typical experience for DACA DREAMers when they first came to the United States. DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, was implemented in 2012 under President Obama to help protect undocumented immigrants, who were brought into the United States as children, or DREAMers, from deportation.
These DREAMers were young, often not told what was happening, brought by parents who truly believed that this was the best option for their children. They heard about the “American Dream” and wanted to see for themselves if it was true. At first, they didn’t understand anything that was happening. But slowly, this newfound place felt more like home. They became accustomed to it, found comfort in highway gas stations, school playgrounds, and with their families. However, for most DREAMers, their parents couldn’t bring them here with a social security number or a permit, and because of DACA, they were able to get a longer stay in the place they knew to be their home, safe from deportation. They could gain a work permit, carry out the great “American Dream,” for themselves and their families. This was until President Trump took action to repeal DACA, stating that the Department of Homeland Security will “begin an orderly transition and wind-down of DACA”, and “provide a window of opportunity for Congress to finally act.” Congress has yet to take action, so DACA is coming to an end.
When I heard the news of DACA ending, I immediately thought of my friend’s boyfriend and DACA DREAMer, Vinicius Cardoso, who moved to the United States from Brazil when he was only about two years old. He was able to go to school and then work because of the protection under DACA. With the new action taken toward DACA, he is in jeopardy of losing his work permit and his job. I contacted him, knowing that when President Trump was elected, he was both angered and scared. Those same feelings were evoked when Trump released this statement on DACA. When I asked him about his current feelings toward this, Cardoso said, “DACA has given me the opportunity to work and go to school. It doesn’t give me a citizenship, but a driver’s license and legitimate Social Security number, so I can work and pay taxes like an American.”
However, he does think that DACA has its drawbacks. “To reapply, it costs four hundred dollars, and we had to reapply every two years. Everything [DACA] gives us expires every two years.” It wasn’t perfect, but it was something. Without being able to renew their work permits, DREAMers found themselves scrambling to find new jobs.
After speaking to Vinicius Cardoso, I confided in student Mia Hamernik, who said, “As someone who comes from a primarily [Mexican] and agricultural community, the day that it was announced President Trump won the election, it was a very scary day for a bunch of people…because it was such a tangible reality to them that their families were going to be sent back out of this country, despite that the U.S. is the only place that they’ve ever known to be their home.”
While the ending of DACA was terrifying to most, Cardoso seemed to find light in this dark situation. He states, “DACA had its run. It was a great run, but sometimes greatness has to come to an end…DREAMers are going to come up, and you can’t stop us.”
