🌳 forgotten dreams beyond DACA
ungrounded hope is a never-ending trauma
On October 6, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was ruled unlawful by the Fifth Circuit Court. The decision was devastating: as a result, initial applications to the program would not be accepted. The undocumented people in this country who are qualified for the policy, but have not yet applied, will continue to be alienated from protections from deportation as well as the ability to work legally.
The court ruled a stay for current beneficiaries, allowing them to continue renewing their two-year temporary deportation protections and work authorization for the time being, giving Congress time to act in response to the ruling. However, it is easy to see through deceptions of reprieve. Todd Schulte, President of FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group, painfully articulated the reality of the situation: DACA is dead.
The death of DACA will have economic consequences for the United States. According to FWD.us, if DACA ends or renewals are not allowed to continue, 1,000 jobs will be lost each and every business day for the next two years. Without the participation of DACA recipients in the labor force, an estimated $11.7 billion in contributions to the U.S. economy will disappear.
I have shared my personal story as a DACA recipient multiple times, including on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, to share the reality and gravity of our situation. Our lives are marked in two-year increments of precarity. It is against all odds that we have created lives in America as students, teachers, entrepreneurs, social workers, healthcare workers, lawyers, and engineers. Our stories are unique, yet they all share a common theme: we are subordinated in a system where the difference in papers prevents us from achieving our true potential.
For over twenty years, Congress has failed to act on this long-standing immigration issue with permanent legislation. For over twenty years, there has been no progress. Yet again, the bells ring for Congress to “act now”, in the lame-duck session before the new Members of Congress are inducted next year. DACA recipients have heard these calls to action before, first in 2017, then in 2020, and finally in 2022.
I want to be hopeful. As a DACA recipient, it is in my best interest to remain hopeful. But fervent hope without groundedness to pragmatism, without semblance to compromise, is not hope. It is foolishness. It is depression. It is exhausting.
Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) provide a semblance of grounded hope. Recently, the two senators proposed bipartisan legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, among funding for enhanced border security and prompt processing of asylum requests. Enacting this compromise is the way: this is the necessary progress beyond the basilisk of inaction, “the chimera of everything-at-once immigration reform.”
Congress has a duty to open its eyes free from the collective delusion, the nightmare that has replaced a lost dream. We have forgotten that DACA was a temporary solution. In the policy’s dying wail, can this truth be any more apparent?
Now is not the time to let partisan politics get in the way of sensible compromise. Congress has known the remedy for years: it is necessary to focus on the immediate problem at hand and legislate permanent protections for DACA recipients.
Congress must have the courage to bring forgotten dreams into reality, to let us be citizens of the only land we have known as home. We have not forgotten. We cannot keep dreaming.