Advocacy groups rallying at SDSU over DACA

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Posted: Feb 09, 2018 2:30 PM EST
Updated: Feb 09, 2018 5:15 PM EST

SAN DIEGO (NEWS 8) - Advocacy groups, expressing anger and frustration, staged a rally at San Diego State Friday calling for a "fix" for dreamers, after DACA was left out of the budget deal.

Protesters are demanding that Congress take action on DACA to immediately remove the threat of deportation for nearly 80,000 dreamers ...

http://www.cbs8.com/story/37470404/advocacy-groups-rallying-at-sdsu-over-daca

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1. Local DACA Recipient Fights to Keep Dreams Alive (WA)

by Shannon Moudy

PULLMAN, WA — ... "We got passed by what's called a coyote. In the beginning we were sleeping with chickens while starving."

She was nine years old. Maria says, "I got here without knowing English. I went into a classroom not knowing exactly what I was here for" ...

"Since November I have been going to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the DREAM Act," she explains. She's been speaking with members of Congress, asking for them to vote down any spending bill that doesn't include the act. She says without that kind of protection in place, she'll always have an expiration date hanging over her head.

"The DREAM act would create a pathway to citizenship, unlike DACA, and would also not criminalize our parents or put them in danger of deportation," she says ...

http://klewtv.com/news/local/local-daca-recipient-fights-to-keep-dreams-alive

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2. Smeared, glorified, political pawns: who are the 'Dreamers' really?

BY GLENN GARVIN AND ALEX DAUGHERTY
February 09, 2018 06:00 AM
Updated 8 hours 52 minutes ago

... "Many of our traditional measures to get a representative sample don't work well on this. It's very difficult to do. I'm confident in our research, but you can't extrapolate it to the entire DACA population. What we say is, it's a very good snapshot of our sample of 2,684 people. And that's all it is.”

Because a few hundred of those people, though they were eligible for DACA, never got around to obtaining the status, the real sample of recipients is a bit less than 2,400 — a tiny percentage of the 690,000 or so immigrants who actually have their DACA papers ...

Government statistics do give us a pretty good picture of the DACA recipients in broad terms. We know there are about 690,000 of them. (The 800,000 number originally used by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been adjusted downward as some recipients marry Americans, starting on the path to U.S. citizenship; leave the country; or fail to renew their status.) A little more than half — 53 percent — are female. Average age: 23 ...

The benefits of DACA ripple out into the general economy. Among those polled by the Center for American Progress, 65 percent had purchased their first car (average price: just over $16,000), injecting sales tax and and registration fees into government tax receipts. And 16 percent bought their first homes ...

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article199160149.html

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3. Dallas ISD support for students, staff and families affected by uncertainty

STEPHEN YOUNG | FEBRUARY 9, 2018 | 4:00AM

Dallas ISD wants its students and employees to be prepared in the event that the federal government allows protections provided by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to expire later this year, district Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said Thursday at event unveiling his district's new website for DACA recipients and their families.

"As a member of an immigrant family, I see myself reflected in the faces of your children, and your faces are those of my parents who sacrificed, worked and dreamed of a brighter future for their children," Hinojosa said in a message to Dallas ISD's parents. "It is heartbreaking to see the uncertainty and fear among undocumented families across the country prompted by the recent developments in the federal government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program" ...

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-isd-begins-to-deal-with-daca-fallout-10351300

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4. Lafayette students push for DACA protections with phone bank

February 9, 2018
February 8, 2018
Claire Grunewald

... This Tuesday, 25 students gathered in the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center in Farinon for the DACA Phone Bank. For an hour, students called residents of Lancaster, PA to urge them to call Representative Lloyd Smucker (R), who "needs to be flipped on DACA," Sara Hayet '18, coordinator of the event, said.

The event was planned by Planned Parenthood Generation Action. Hayet, the club's president, said they connected with Planned Parenthood Keystone in the Lehigh Valley to get the data, numbers to call and the script for the phone conversations.

Hayet said the phone bank started as an effort to do more activism on campus that benefited the larger community.

"Planned Parenthood Keystone, which is the affiliate for the Lehigh Valley, <does> a lot of work with immigrant rights because a lot of their patients are immigrants and are dreamers, and so they've been doing a lot of work specifically around DACA," Hayet said. "We wanted to do stuff that also connected to the broader community and impacts folks on our own campus as well" ...

https://www.lafayettestudentnews.com/blog/2018/02/09/daca-phone-back-urges-people-to-act/

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5. DACA recipients and supporters raise support for immigration legislation at UNC

Tommy Wood
February 8, 2018

... Solano-Córdova remembers the sounds the animals made the night his family prepared to cross the border, through brush and a drainage ditch. A border patrol car was in their way on the other side. The kids' light-up shoes would have given them away, so they went barefoot and their mom carried them past the car and into the country they wanted to make their home.

Many of the more than 17,300 other recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in Colorado have story similar to the once Solano-Córdova told Thursday in a DACA forum at the University of Northern Colorado. They arrived in the country undocumented as children and earned deferral from deportation or a work permit by graduating high school, earning their GED or serving in the military and not committing a crime.

With DACA scheduled to end March 5, Solano-Córdova and four other DACA recipients and supporters are touring 10 college campuses around Colorado between Thursday and Sunday to rouse support for legislation that would make the program permanent.

"We are continually talking to our senators and our representatives and all they do is blame the other party (for the Congressional immigration deadlock) while 800,000 people wait in suspense," said Victor Galvan, director of membership at the Colorado Immigration Rights coalition ...

https://www.greeleytribune.com/news/local/daca-recipients-and-supporters-tell-their-stories-and-raise-support-for-immigration-legislation-at-unc/

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6. DACA recipient recognized for efforts on Capitol Hill

Hillary Simon
Updated: Feb 08, 2018 10:55 PM CST

... Every 2 years, Fernanda said she pays about $ 500 to keep her DACA, but unless the Dream Act passes, she’s having doubts about her future.

Fernanda Herrera considers Alabama and the United States home, and she thanks DACA a policy that allows minors who entered the country illegally to stay, partially for that ..

But recently, DACA was taken away by the Trump administration ...

"It means I will lose my ability to pay back money I owe in student loans. I had a wreck last year and owe $40,000 in that and I can’t help my parents out when they need me because I won’t be able to have a job, and basically my college degree is worthless," said Herrera ...

http://www.wiat.com/news/local/local-daca-recipient-mentioned-on-capitol-hill/961649295

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7. Columbia DACA Recipient Dreams of Future in Nursing

Columbia, SC (WLTX) - There are currently 6,400 DACA recipients in our state, including 23-year-old Nataly Martinez ...

Although Martinez earned the grades just like her classmates, that still won't be enough for her to become an official licensed registered nurse in South Carolina. That's because she's a DACA recipient, also known as a 'Dreamer' ...

"I just couldn't qualify for some of the scholarships I know I could have gotten," she said. "I didn't really attempt to do them because I was too discouraged by it, I guess" ...

"I see that a lot when people are talking about it. 'You're using our taxes, our money', but we pay taxes!" said Martinez ...

http://www.wltx.com/news/local/columbia-daca-recipient-dreams-of-future-in-nursing/516246403

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8. DREAMers share their stories

... I came from Bogota, Colombia with my family, seeking the opportunities that my mountainous homeland could no longer provide. Living undocumented in the US has taught me how to transform the pain of not being recognized as a human being by the US Government into a dedication to creating spaces for empowerment and liberation with the undocumented community across the nation. I see the beauty in the imagination that comes with battling oppression that helps us to reimagine a new tomorrow and the opportunity of expanding the mantle of democracy to cover 11 million undocumented families, casting a visionary new future that focuses on liberation. The DREAM Act is a critical step towards liberation if it comes without any interior enforcement and no money for the border. As DACA provided me with the opportunity to expand the chances for me and my family to live a life full of joy and free from deportation, the DREAM Act would protect us and bring the US closer to liberation. That is why I’m devoting the rest of my life to strengthening the powerful immigrant rights family. History will remember this moment, and the history books will celebrate those that stood on the side of immigrants and democracy. We will continue to expand the definition of citizenship by putting our pain in the public sphere and forever will be undocumented, unafraid, and committed to nonviolent resistance for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world ...

http://www.wusa9.com/article/news/politics/daca-dreamers-share-their-stories-as-deal-looms/65-516257256