DACA, which stands for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, is one of the most complicated issues that affects us as a student body and a university. I believe we need to help the undocumented people who are already in this country, but at some point, we need to crack down on illegal immigration, so we don’t have more people flooding in and taking the opportunities that would otherwise go to people who legally immigrated here or were born here.
DACA began in 1996. Former President Bill Clinton passed The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act into law. This made it next to impossible for illegal aliens and their children to get legal status. This policy, like most other government policies, didn’t go according to plan. To fix that in 2001, The DREAM Act was introduced, and it would give children of illegal immigrants otherwise known as DREAMers a pathway to citizenship. In 2012, Congress was still stalling on the DREAM Act, so Former President Barack Obama created DACA. DACA doesn’t give these children a path to citizenship, but it does protect them from deportation, allows them to work and go to college in the US.
I have met people here that have received help from DACA and I sympathize with their situation. Ultimately, they didn’t ask to be in this situation. It would be great if there was an easy path to citizenship for these students, but this is just one of the many issues that effects our immigration system. We need to help the undocumented persons who are already here, but we need to stop helping illegal immigrants at some point. Otherwise, we are going to have even more people crossing over the border who would take opportunities that would normally go to someone already here. As a University, we should encourage undocumented students that are already here to stay and help them in any way that we can, such as financially. However, in the not too distant future we need to work and help the bright students that are citizens of the United States first. In the future, if we want to continue to be the land of second chances, we need to focus on helping the people in need already here.
Contact Josh Tandy at [email protected]
