If Republicans get their way, thousands of educators like Maria Rocha will be pushed out of their jobs teaching our nation’s children. She’s among the estimated 9,000 educators who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The successful and popular policy protects beneficiaries from deportation, but also allows them to work legally.
Republicans have been steadily working to end this policy through litigation, and they’ve been succeeding thanks to their anti-immigrant judges. The program’s future is, frankly, quite grim, and without legislative action, Rocha and 9,000 educators will be among the hundreds of thousands of immigrants pushed out of the work force and left vulnerable to deportation.
RELATED STORY: GOP's opposition to immigration bills has huge human costs. It's also costing our economy
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“DACA recipients, who are are employed at higher rates than the general US population, fill thousands of jobs in critical occupations like education,” Bloomberg said. “One recent academic analysis found that more than 36,000 teaching positions are currently unfilled in the US, a shortage that would be exacerbated with the loss of employment authorization for DACA recipients.”
Roughly 34,000 DACA recipients work in the health care field, and have been among the front-line workers of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Ana Cueva is an intensive care nurse who traveled from her home in Utah to help treat patients in California. She credited the nurses who helped care for her mom after cancer for inspiring her to become a nurse as well. "She would tell me how the nurses at the hospital helped her through a difficult time,” she told CNN. Manuel Bernal, an emergency medicine physician in training at Chicago’s Advocate Christ Medical Center, told The Washington Post it was risky work. “But I also understand it’s part of the job I signed up for. I think it’s worth it when I see some patients come in who are extremely ill, and I’m able to intervene.”
The U.S. is also facing a critical health care worker shortage that the pandemic only made worse. Lawmakers like Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla have said that one way to address this is to update our nation’s immigration system. But no Republican in his chamber has stepped up to push humane immigration legislation. Instead, the GOP platform continues to be pro-deportation, because that’s their position in trying to end DACA.
The GOP’s opposition to passing humane immigration legislation has immense human costs, and immense economic costs. A coalition of top businesses and business leader have warned that should Republicans succeed in their efforts, an estimated 22,000 DACA recipients could lose their work permits every single month. Ultimately, DACA’s end would result in half a million lost jobs and cost our economy nearly $12 billion. The businesses are urging congressional leaders to act before the end of the year.
“The worker shortage will get worse for the United States if hundreds of thousands of critical workers are stripped of their legal ability to support themselves and their families,” they continued. That includes Rocha, who has taught students pre-K through sixth grade and worked as a nanny and housekeeper before becoming an educator.
“I saw the lack of teachers that looked like me, that were from my community, that related to the students,” she said in the report. “There’s a science behind teaching. I’m fascinated with teaching kids how to say thank you, how to blow your nose, how to start reading.”
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