Hope for the ones who DREAM of staying in the United States
Imagine entering a country as a young child, living the majority of your life there and obeying the rules of that country only to find out you may be deported and sent to the place you were born but do not remember.
For recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Trump administration’s early September decision to end the program makes this a possibility.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, DACA was signed into law in June 2012 and grants children who arrived in the U.S. as children a two-year deferral of deportation that can be extended. To qualify for DACA, the young adults must have entered America while under the age of 16, have resided in the U.S. since June 15, 2007, have no lawful status in the U.S., no felony convictions and must be “either currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of graduation from high school.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Sept. 5 that the Trump administration was rescinding the Obama-era program and giving Congress a six-month window to reach a deal on a bill that would allow DACA recipients to remain in America without losing their status.
The nearly 800,000 DACA recipients like Martha Rios illegally entered America as young children, when they had little or no choice in the decision to enter illegally. They attend school in America, work in America, abide by American laws and have bright ideas to contribute to America’s future.
“I was brought here when I was two years old,” Rios told the Columbia Missourian after the announcement to end DACA. “We (DACA recipients) don’t want to go anywhere else because this is our home. This is my children’s home.”
DACA recipients fear that the end of the program and the possibility of a replacement bill not passing in Congress in the next six months could lead to immigration officials knocking on their doors to deporting them to a country they hardly know.
I am saddened that Trump decided to end DACA, but I am hopeful for the bipartisan effort in Congress to find a solution. One example of proposed solutions is the DREAM Act.
Spearheaded by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the DREAM Act will similarly cancel the removal of young people who arrived in the country illegally as children and meet certain requirements similar to those listed in DACA, according to a section-by-section explanation of the bill in a July 2017 Press release found on Durbin’s website. https://www.durbin.senate.gov/
“Congress now has 6 (sic) months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was never able to do),” President Trump tweeted following the announcement.
Because former President Obama signed DACA into law via executive order, some Republicans like Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell view the program as a presidential overreach. If Congress can pass the DREAM Act or another similar piece of legislation, it could receive the legitimacy that some believed its predecessor lacked.
It would be a shame if Congress is unable to pass some form of the DREAM Act and current DACA recipients with ideas to better America are deported and watch their lives derail and take a drastic turn. It is a shame that anyone would have to be concerned about how different his or her life could look in six months if a DACA replacement is not passed. Congress has a chance to remedy this, and I hope that they take this responsibility to heart and are able to remedy it.