On Tuesday, September 6, Donald Trump announced plans to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) which protected illegal immigrant children from deportation.
Before it was cancelled, DACA was created by former President Barack Obama. This executive decision affects the students of Woodside High School, some of whom are DACA Dreamers.
A survey done by The Center for American Progress shows that only 6.7% of Dreamers twenty-five and older are unemployed, 98.1% are bilingual, and 80.1% strongly agree that being bilingual is an asset to their employer.
Alexa Vazquez, a senior at Woodside, says,”Dreamers had the benefit of working and an education, yet Trump took their hope.”
More than 800,000 Dreamers have been left unprotected from being deported back to their home countries. Many of these teenagers and young adults fled their home countries in search for a better life that included a education and a job. Some no longer speak the language of the country they fled.
“People with the DACA program have jobs. They have no criminal record. They are in the military. Yes, it has definitely helped the country”, shared Ms. Ortez, a Salvadoran-American teacher at Woodside when asked if DACA benefited the country.
Many people believe that illegal immigrants and children of illegal immigrants are bad people who have come to this country to “take Americans jobs” and “sell drugs and commit crimes”. Also a lot of Dreamers came here not by their own choice but by their parents choice.
However, a study done by the CATO Institute shows that only 0.98% of Dreamers were incarcerated in 2015 while the native-born citizens incarceration rate is 14 percent higher than Dreamers. As a whole Dreamers are hard working individuals and should be seen that way by everyone.
There are many resources available for members of the DACA program. United We Dream provides multiple useful resources if you are looking for help.
“I think it’s very unfair for the children of people who moved here because they’ve been living in this society their entire lives and they were raised here,” Sasha Fouksman, a sophomore at Woodside High School shared. “It is very unfair to them that they are not able to be part of this society as part of a working class.”
