Hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. will count their blessings Saturday as they mark a new anniversary of a program that allowed them to stay in the country, study, work and build lives.
Millions more who arrived here as children and don’t qualify wish they were so lucky.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program began 12 years ago Saturday. While its beneficiaries hope to now have permanent legal status in the US, they are also celebrating the education, the higher-paying jobs, the families and homes they have been able to build, and the freedom from fear of arrest and deportation. this came as a result of President Barack Obama’s executive order.
But their celebration is tempered by the possibility that Republicans will succeed in their legal and political battle to end DACA. Donald Trump, who tried to end DACA and prevented new candidacies, he could be re-elected president.
DACA Recipients They also recognize that they are outnumbered by the more than a million young immigrants who could have qualified for DACA but were denied due to Republican-led battles to end it and the suspension of new DACA applications.
By 2025, no undocumented high school student will qualify for DACA because they will have entered the U.S. after mandatory arrival in the U.S. on June 15, 2007, according to FWD.USa progressive group that focuses on immigration and criminal justice.
“Young people who were undocumented in elementary school and are now entering middle or high school or graduating are facing an uncertain future, as I did when I was in their shoes,” said Greisa Martínez Rosas, executive director of the United We Dream network. . , an advocacy group led by young immigrants. Martínez graduated from high school undocumented but obtained DACA in 2013.
These realities created an urgency in these elections that caused many immigrant advocates to criticize President Joe Biden for not doing more to protect them, but also for favoring his re-election.
“President Biden can walk and chew gum at the same time and so can we,” Martínez said. “We can be clear about the enormous needs that millions of undocumented people face and the lack of action this president or administration has taken and also be clear that we cannot have a second Trump administration.”
Biden campaign spokeswoman Fabiola Rodriguez said in a statement that “On Day One, President Biden sent Congress a plan to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers and did everything in his power to preserve and strengthen the DACA program, including expanding quality health services and affordable access to health care through the ACA to more than 100,000 Dreamers.” She added that Trump “is promising to end the DACA program, separate families, and institute mass detention camps for immigrants.”
Trump campaign spokesman Jaime Florez said he had no comment on the DACA anniversary or Trump’s DACA plans.
As of now, about 530,000 people are in the US under DACA. An estimated 84,000 have pending applications that were filed at the time the ban on new applications was briefly lifted. In 2023, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that 1.16 million immigrants would have qualified for DACA under the 2012 rules if the program had been allowed to continue without legal attempts to stop it.
A lock on new apps and lives in limbo
The Biden administration began accepting new DACA applications in 2021, and that’s when Reyna Valdivias Solorio submitted her paperwork. But her request was stuck in limbo when a Texas court declared DACA illegal and again blocked the processing of all new applications. The Biden administration is still accepting new applications but not processing them.
A recent graduate of Nevada State University, Valdivias has a degree in business administration with a specialization in financial services. She hoped to be a financial analyst. Instead, she works with her father in construction and landscaping.
“I am a 120-pound girl who lifts wheelbarrows much heavier than my own weight, digs knee-deep trenches, and lives in extreme exhaustion in the Las Vegas heat,” Valdivias said at a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. But that’s not the hard part, she said.
“The hardest part is the emotional stress that comes from living in fear that one day, my older siblings, my parents and I may be deported and separated from my younger siblings in this country we call home,” she said. Her younger siblings were born in the US and are not at risk of deportation.
Alexis Toro Juarez, a biology major at Marymount University in Virginia who hopes to pursue dentistry, planned to apply for DACA. He received his application, his fingerprints were taken and he was just waiting for a Social Security document when the courts closed the applications again.
“I was worried about whether I would be able to finish my studies after high school,” Toro Juarez said. A scholarship through Dream.USA, which offers scholarships to undocumented students, paid their college tuition.
Eighteen-year-old Sergio Cipriano just graduated from high school in Phoenix and is headed to St. Mary’s University in San Antonio to begin his dream of becoming a pediatrician. A spiritual person, he wanted to attend a religious school and was also able to pay for college through a Dream.US scholarship.
He was brought to the US when he was 1 year old. He applied for DACA as a high school freshman, just meeting the eligibility requirements. A few weeks after receiving notification that your application had been received, a ruling by a Texas judge ended new orderIt is, he said.
“It’s scary,” he said of living without legal status and the possibility of deportation. “I could lose the life I have here – I carry that and it’s a lot, but I try not to be afraid.”
Abraham Enriquez, who runs the conservative-leaning Bienvenido US, agreed with his liberal counterparts that some immigrants who arrived as children deserve a path to citizenship through congressional action. But like other Republicans, he said DACA should never have existed and should be disbanded. He emphasized that he was speaking for himself and not for his group, which focuses on Hispanic involvement.
The White House plans an event next week to mark the anniversary of DACA. The administration is working to provide DACA beneficiaries with no health coverage access to Affordable Care Act plans.
No legal status, but part of the community
Many of the young people who were excluded from DACA are following their predecessors who fought for the program, engaging in activism or civic and community life.
Valdivias, Toro Juarez and Cipriano were part of the contingent that visited lawmakers’ D.C. offices and gathered at the Capitol last week. They are also involved in activist groups that are working to turn out voters in this election.
Karime Rodriguez, a former DACA holder who now has legal residency, said there is disillusionment in the community that once again a president has not been able to make immigration reform happen.
“We know the candidates are not ideal right now,” said Rodriguez, immigration services manager for the immigrant advocacy group LUCHA.
“We are not voting for our saviors,” she said. “You have to vote for the candidate who will allow us to make changes in the future – Trump is not that candidate.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
