Reyna Montoya was on a plane, Sheridan Aguirre was standing outside the White House, and Concepcion Solis had arrived at work early to be in front of her computer when US attorney general Jeff Sessions upended their lives.
“I was debating whether or not I should come to work because I knew it was going to be hard,” Solis said. “But what can I do? Now more than ever I need to continue working.”
The Trump administration’s termination of the policy that protected “Dreamers” – undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children – from deportation will affect nearly 800,000 young people. Five years after Barack Obama’s implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) allowed recipients to get driver’s licenses, attend college, begin careers, purchase homes, and do all the other things that US citizens take for granted, Dreamers now face the reality that it could all be taken away.
For Solis, that means preparing for a future without her well-paid job at an insurance company and her rent-controlled apartment in her hometown of Oakland.
“My work permit expires in September, so I have until September,” the 30-year-old Daca recipient said. “I need to work as much as I can right now and save as much money as I can.”
Among Solis’ most pressing concerns is the fact that she provided the federal government with extensive information about herself in order to receive Daca in the first place. “Immigration has my address,” said said. “So come September what is going to happen?”
“I can’t stay there, but where am I going to go?”
Montoya, a Daca recipient and the founder of a grassroots immigrant rights organization in Phoenix, Arizona, was concerned not just for herself but for the people who work for her.
“I have as an employee a US citizen,” she said Tuesday. “What does it mean if I get taken away?”
For Angelica Hernandez, a mechanical engineer at an energy efficiency company in Chandler, Arizona, the stakes are incredibly high. Hernandez was born in Mexico, but came to the US at the age of nine. She received Daca when she was studying for a master’s degree at Stanford. She bought a house, married another Daca recipient, and has two children who are US citizens.
“Because of all of the rumors, you kind of mentally prepare for what could happen, but you’re never actually fully prepared,” she said. “I don’t qualify for any type of way for me to become legalized … We’re definitely looking at a plan to protect my daughters in case we are deported.”
Trump’s decision to rescind the program puts the onus on congress to address the situation of the Dreamers – and all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US – legislatively. It also raises the prospect of unsavory negotiations pitting one group of immigrants against another: White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that Trump would not support a standalone bill granting legal status to Dreamers.
On Tuesday night, more uncertainty was thrown into the mix when Trump tweeted cryptically that if Congress did not act, then he would “revisit this issue”.
For activists like Sheridan Aguirre, a Daca recipient and organizer with United We Dream, political dealmaking would be untenable.
“We will not be used as bargaining chips,” Aguirre said Tuesday morning from outside the White House, where he had joined a rally and protest. “We do not want any legislation that throws our parents under the bus and results in them being criminalized, or adds more money for border enforcement.”
The recision of Daca was met with outrage from Democratic lawmakers, business and technology leaders, and immigrant rights advocates. Protests erupted in cities across the country, including Denver, where thousands of high school students walked out of school.
Belen Sisa, 23, a Daca recipient and senior at Arizona State University, joined one of those protests, marching with fellow immigrant rights activists to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) office in Phoenix after Sessions’ announcement Tuesday morning.
But as the march continued, Sisa had to peel away to go inside. She had a 12pm appointment to have her fingerprints taken – one of the steps she must fulfill to have her Daca status renewed for two more years.
“I feel very happy that I’m going to be able to fit into the window of people who are going to be able to renew, but it also makes me a little bit mad,” Sisa said. “I’m going through this entire application process, paying fees, and doing all these things that they expect of me, when the message is really clear that I’m not valued as a human.”
“They just go about business like nothing happened,” she added. “The person who was taking my fingerprints asked me how my morning was.”
If you didn’t come here, legally, you don’t belong here. You can “dream” from the Mexican border, or whatever country you came from. A nation that grants amnesty to illegals does not a prosperous nation make.
You can go anywhere, but you can’t stay here. File your paperwork for citizenship like everyone else, and wait your turn. Allowing people who came here illegally to stay, and granting them citizenship is a slap in the face to everyone else who goes through the process. After all, why should they? What would be the point. Just come here illegally and get your status handed to you. No incentive to go through the channels. trying to go through the channels once you’ve been here illegally is no substitute.
IRuleMe 2 years, 5 months ago.
