Catholic leaders press for Dream Act as DACA deadline looms

We have six months before our nation begins feeling the full effect of the Trump administration’s elimination of the DACA program (which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program established by President Barack Obama to allow undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children to avoid deportation if they register with the government). Then, Trump tweeted that there was no such deal.

It said the complaint, which revived a prior lawsuit filed in support of DACA past year, was the first legal assault on the program’s repeal.

In return, DACA recipients were granted a work permit and protection from deportation. The majority of those affected by DACA may be of Hispanic/Latino descent but we also acknowledge that all ethnicities whom migrate to the United States are effected. However, what these people don’t realize is that getting legal documentation isn’t easy. There are demanding requirements to qualify.

In a press release issued Wednesday, California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley noted the Mission Asset Fund’s DACA Renewal Scholarship Fund has tripled to $3 million – believed to be enough to help 6,000 so-called “Dreamers” renew their DACA permits by the Friday deadline. Applicants must be either finished with their education and working or now pursuing an education or be honorably discharged veterans.

She said she’s met with families who told her they paid an attorney $1,000 or more to process their renewal applications, only to be left empty-handed.

Councilman Jimmy Dutra cited a recent incident in Houston, Texas, when two undocumented immigrants, one of them a DACA recipient, died trying to save people from rising floods during Hurricane Harvey. Yet, immigrants the world over daily risk life and limb to make similar journeys, all for the chance to provide their children with a hopeful future. In Southern California and elsewhere, legal nonprofits and advocacy groups have been scheduling free DACA renewal workshops, including one set for Saturday sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles.

A clean DREAM Act solves a problem without creating more pain for immigrants. Twenty-four hundred DACA applications were approved from MS, as of September of a year ago, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Dreamers run their own craft stores or do tax preparation services, and some even have created their own tech startups. Now he is 27. However, the Trump administration announced steps to phase out DACA Sept. 5. Many undocumented LGBTQIA people could face persecution or physical harm if they are deported.

“At the government level, certainly at the federal level, we have done just a terrible job in terms of figuring out immigration and letting people flounder and not understanding processes going forward”, the Petaluma resident said while addressing a sizable crowd gathered at the Lucchesi Park community center. Barrera also is a local leader with Mi Familia Vota and with the TRUST Orlando Coalition, which is urging Orlando to join other cities like Denver and Boston in adopting common-sense policies that maintain trust with immigrant and people of color communities instead of becoming arms of federal immigration enforcement. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said they made a deal with Trump protecting Dreamers as part of a larger agreement that included enhanced border security, but this has not been confirmed by Trump.

She said immigration officials have “everything they need to know” about her, as is true for all people enrolled in the DACA program. Despite overwhelming support for immigration reform to protect childhood arrivals to the US, and numerous attempts to pass the immigration reform bill the DREAM Act since it was first introduced in 2001, the fight for amnesty has been fraught with failures – largely due to threatened filibusters from immigration hardliners. Last week’s rumors of an agreement should be just the start of positive immigration reform.

The RAC (Recognizing America’s Children) Act is the proposal favored by many Republicans.