Campaign Action
Diana, a youth leader with immigrant rights group Make the Road New York, writes in a new Medium piece that before she was allowed to work legally, she struggled to balance what part-time jobs she could find and her education. But when she was just 17 years old, “I began thinking I was not meant to be in school, that I was not smart enough so I dropped out of college after my first year.” But, then came the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, implemented by former President Barack Obama in 2012:
When I was 18, I decided to apply and became a DACA recipient. DACA allowed me to go back to school, knowing that I could find a steady job with the hours I needed to concentrate on my grades. I decided to major in Sociology and Human Rights, Although DACA did not allow me to get financial aid (New York State still hasn’t passed the DREAM Act, which would allow students like me to get financial aid), I knew that I know could find a job within my field of study, one that helped me grow intellectually. DACA allowed me to apply for programs and fellowships that all required a social security number — all of the ones that I was not able to access prior to DACA for the lack of a piece of paper.
For the first time in my life, I felt consistency.
I am supposed to walk down the stage and receive my college diploma in two semesters. This has been my one goal for the past 22 years, to finally get my degree. To put the pieces of my father’s broken heart back together and make him proud.
But with Donald Trump now threatening to end DACA, I now wonder if I will ever be able to become the lawyer or professor that I want to be, to continue working and helping youth who felt the way the same way I did while growing up. Something so close feels like it could soon be so far off.
Within the past few days, numerous rumors that the Trump administration would imminently end DACA have left undocumented immigrant communities and their allies living with anxiety and fear. It’s no surprise why a recent Rice University study found that immigrant youth “in particular are at risk for psychological distress and diminished quality of life as a result of the many complex stressors they face,” including the threat of being torn from the only country they know as home.
“Once again,” Diana continued, “I am reminded that when you are undocumented there is no such thing as consistency. That you must remain awake, even when you are asleep.”
Diana is just one of the more than 800,000 undocumented immigrant youth who stand to lose work permits and protection from deportation if the Trump administration rescinds DACA. Recipients of the program, many of whom arrived to the United States when they were infants and had no idea they were undocumented until later on in life, are deeply engrained in American society. They own homes, pay taxes, go to college, and are entrepreneurs and parents of U.S. citizens. To uproot them would mean uprooting American families. Diana writes:
We are in a time in which we are uncertain of DACA’s future, whether it’ll be taken away from us tomorrow, next week or not at all. I think of those families whose food on the table depends on the future of DACA. I think of the families who will be separated or who will struggle financially without it. I think of those students who are so close to finishing their dream careers. I think of those undocumented people who are going back in the shadows because of fear of deportation. I think of their journey to self-liberation and what will mean for each and one of them moving forward.
I am inspired and empowered by all those people who are willing to put their bodies in the front to defend DACA, who have done that for many years, those who have taken the streets to demand our families to remain together, for our youth to receive an education. I can not stress enough the power of community, of unity. One too many times we have been told to give up, to accept our situation. We have wondered where home really is. And we have realized that home has become the place where we can be all of our identities at once and say them out loud with no fear. Today, we are undocumented and here to stay.
Read the entire letter from Diana here. This is a critical time for DACA recipients, immigrant youth, and their families, and we must stand by them by not only fighting to defend DACA, but to call on congressional leaders to pass the bipartisan DREAM Act to finally give immigrant youth permanent protections and a path to citizenship. Visit DefendDACA.com today and stand by immigrant youth. They are here to stay.