The Termination of DACA: A Generation of Dreamers Left Dreaming
Carla Mena is 27-years-old, a college graduate, an employee of Duke University, a Raleigh native and above all, a Dreamer.
Dreamers are DACA recipients who have been granted the right to stay in the country by way of an executive order by Barack Obama. In July of 2012, Carla came out of the shadows and registered with the national government but now, she lives in fear of her dreams being taken from her once again.
President Trump’s announcement of the possible termination of DACA on March 5, 2018 caused Carla, along with 800,000 other DACA recipients, to live in fear of possibly being deported.
DACA protects undocumented immigrants from deportation by granting them two-year stays in United States as long as they entered the country before their 16th birthday, have not committed any crimes and have either attended school or joined the military.
With pressure from Dreamers, President Obama used an executive order to create the program in 2012, granting them a social security number. This social security number granted Dreamers legality and the ability to follow their dreams.
Ana Silvia, a senior at Elon University and activist for DACA recipients, has hosted panels on campus and advocacy meetings to try and do everything she can to help Dreamers. In her mind, the possible termination of DACA is a human rights issue.
“The program allows them to not live in fear and to live in the shadows,” Silvia said. “They gave trust when they came out of the shadows.”
Silvia and other activists believe that the removal of DACA is a violation of the trust they put into the national government.
When the program was first announced, Mena went to the closest Bank Of America and deposited money into an account to prove that she was in the country and started on her first formal actions to be a productive citizen.
Mena came from Peru at the age of eleven and even though she first gained a legal presence when she became a Dreamer, she considers herself to be more American than most.
“It was funny when I moved here because the Raleigh flag is the same as the Peruvian flag and that’s not something that most people know, but that’s how American I am,” Mena said.
Some Dreamers come to America at a very young age and know no country other than their own, but feel just as American as those who were born here. The thought of being deported to an unknown place, a place that the government dictates as their “home” is a very scary reality for DACA recipients.
“All of these individuals are being forced to make a decision where their degrees no longer matter and they have to go back to a country they don’t recognize,” Silvia said. “They have to restart in a foreign place. You’re not American enough.”
Dreamers are left in constant limbo of being told that they do not belong in the one place that feels like home to them. While a national issue, the effects can be felt on many personal levels for some Americans.
When DACA came into effect it brought economic benefits to the country. In fact, with the termination of DACA, the country's economy could suffer with the loss of the two billion dollars paid in taxes by Dreamers according to CNN. Not only would that be a loss of income, but deporting them would cost the U.S. government $7.5 billion, according to the Cato Institute for American Progress, a public policy research organization.
Dreamers, just like Carla Mena, are at risk of losing the opportunity to dream and be productive members of society. Without DACA, they lose the ability to dream. It is a broken system that needs to be fixed, Silvia explains.
“It was only a temporary solution or a band aid but allowed people to achieve their dreams while here,” she said.
Now, the Dreamers stand in limbo waiting on what will happen to them. As they sit waiting on Congress and President Trump, the Dreamers keep dreaming -- praying that those dreams can still become reality.