Campaign Action
Blanca Morales, Dalia Larios, Alma Oñate and and Anthony Tucker-Bartley are the American Dream. Their immigrant parents worked two or three jobs as farm workers, landscapers, appliance technicians, and caregivers to give them a better life. Today, the four are students at the prestigious Harvard Medical School, pursuing paths to become doctors. But, their lives are in limbo. They are Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries, and because Donald Trump is holding them hostage unless he gets his white supremacist immigration wish list, both their families and future could be at risk:
For Morales, DACA gave her the courage to chase her dream and win a place at the nation's top medical school, as ranked by US News & World Report. She'd graduated college seven years earlier and done a variety of jobs, including as a Mary Kay beauty consultant to make ends meet.
Throughout it all, she says, she had the unwavering support and encouragement of her mother, who developed a respiratory illness that Morales feels is linked to her work in the fields, and her father, who once sacrificed a week's worth of groceries to buy her a calculator for calculus class.
Life got a little easier under DACA and then again at Harvard Medical School, where university President Drew Faust publicly opposed Trump's decision last year to end DACA and Harvard Law School scholars offered to help undocumented students.
Morales and her fellow medical students found themselves in white coats that doubled as suits of armor, and with a megaphone to boot.
"That's why I think it's important for us, having this privilege of the white coat and the Ivy League schooling behind us, to talk about these issues," said Oñate, who crossed the border with her family in a desperate attempt to find a doctor who could save her sister's eyesight.
Many young immigrants and the U.S.-born kids of immigrants will commonly tell you about the courage of their parents, who left everything familiar—their language, their friends, their homes, their country—for the hope and promise of the United States. And for many of these parents, their definition of success is to see their kids succeed. But, Trump’s wish list is threatening to tear these families apart, because his proposal could put DACA recipients on a path to citizenship but throw their parents and families under the bus. That’s not a deal these young immigrants are willing to make.
Morales told CNN that she still carries the calculator her father scrimped and saved for and can’t believe that politicians would make her choose between herself and her family. “Each says he or she would rather not accept a path to US citizenship if the same option was denied their parents,” according to CNN. "’They haven't met my parents,’ Morales says between deep sobs and pauses. ‘They haven't seen all the work that they have put in, every sacrifice they've made.’”
The four students, among the estimated 100 DACA recipients currently enrolled in medical schools nationwide, also spoke out in a joint op-ed, writing that “this is a critical time: Our country faces a shortage of about 100,000 physicians by 2025 across all specialties. Since medical education requires all doctors to complete residency for specialized training and full licensing accreditation, DACA medical students face tremendous uncertainty if they lack work authorization”:
Without DACA, there is no possibility of continuing the natural progression of medical training. Years of hard work would be thrown away — a training truncated. DACA students will not be the only Americans to suffer from this. The communities we hope to serve will also be affected: your neighbors, your family, your friends, and even you.
In this period of acute need for trained doctors, the contributions that undocumented youth can make are substantial. Based on enrollment rates to undergraduate education — and later entry into medical school — it is estimated that DACA students in this country can contribute a new physician workforce of 5,400 doctors in the coming decades. Since more than 90 percent of DACA recipients are Latinos, they can help diversify the physician pool and increase the number of underrepresented doctors in the U.S.
And it’s not just that DACA recipients should be able to stay here in the U.S. because they have important roles and contributions—they are not their roles and contributions—it’s that they should be able to stay here in the U.S. because this is their home. And, this is their parents’ home too. It’s up to all of us to pressure Congress and make sure any plan that pits Dreamer against their parents is one that gets rejected. The op-ed from the four continues:
At the onset of our medical careers we made an oath to you, those who may one day stand before us as patients. The oath is simple: do no harm. With these words, we vowed to make decisions placing you first. We vowed to protect you from all forms of disease, including injustice.
Today, we write to you as medical students with fears of our own. That’s because, in addition to being future doctors, we are undocumented Americans. The uncertainty surrounding our status has become magnified with the rescindment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. To remain silent on this issue is to counter the role we have to advocate for ourselves and, more importantly, the patients we serve.
“With an impending decision from Congress,” the four conclude, “we ask you to reflect on the contributions we can make, but also remember our humanity.”