“Once I got DACA, I thought, ‘Now it’s on me to do it.’ I think getting DACA absolutely changed the way that I saw what I wanted to do … It gave me a safety net” (“Interview”). Meet Gabriela Hernandez. Born in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, she came to the United States as a six year old, fleeing an abusive household alongside her mother. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is a program that the Obama administration created in which “certain people who came to the United States as children [below the age of 16] and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal.” Deferred action is a limited immigration benefit that …show more content…
“Now, let’s be clear. This is not amnesty. This is not immunity. This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary, stopgap measure that lets us focus our resources while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people. It is the — it is the right thing to do” (The New York Times). As Obama perfectly summarized, DACA does not excuse illegal immigration. It accommodates current residents who lack documentation, but are driven, opportunity seeking, contributors to society, such that deportation efforts can be focused on criminal activity and people who do not benefit the country. Despite claims that DACA is an excuse to bypass immigration policies, DACA is an program that supports those who have lived in the United States for the near entirety of their lives, who seek opportunity and education, who provide for the common good of the nation, in the midst of being treated like …show more content…
In fact, illegal immigrants do not have a higher likelihood of committing a crime than native-born Americans. For example, a natural experiment was conducted regarding the Secure Communities (SCOMM) program. According to the CATO Institute, the SCOMM program was an “interior immigration enforcement program started in 2008 that checked the fingerprints of local and state arrestees against federal immigration databases.” If the ICE suspected an arrestee of undocumented immigration, the ICE would order a detainer to hold the arrestee until the ICE was able to pick them up (“Criminal”). The Obama administration ended this program 2014. Following the notion that a large crime rate accompanies illegal immigrants, one would expect a significant crime decline in the areas in which the government implemented the program; however, this was not the case. On the contrary, crime rates didn’t experience significant change, signalling that illegal immigrants were not any more prone to crime than native-born Americans. Despite many stereotypes which suggest otherwise, DACA does not facilitate crime, but relieves stress for many opportunity seeking, hardworking immigrants, whom the government has filtered with the discretion of numerous credible services and organizations, including the CAP and
In 2012, President Obama introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for young people who had been residing in the United States at least five years prior to the bill’s passing. DACA was the most significant provision from the Obama administration that aimed to help undocumented youth be integrated in the American society. It protected them from deportation and allowed them to obtain a state identification, work permit, and Social Security number. The immigrant communities celebrated this bill as it had been a long time since there was a significant change in the country’s immigration policy. However, the current administration and government pose a serious threat to the beneficiaries of the DACA program as well as
The United States has been known as the “Melting Pot ”and “The Land of Opportunity” for decades, but the title is slowly diminishing as scrutiny has been bombarding immigrants for wanting a better life. As questions arise of what is needed to protect the borders from possible terrorist other factors come into play such as what immigrants have to contribute to the country. Immigration is actually vital to our country since it provides the government more income, it brings the country a positive image, and DACA helps the community come together.
In June 2012, President Obama announced an immigration policy that would grant deportation relief to qualifying immigrants. The policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), would also give these undocumented immigrants the right to work. Although DACA has changed since President Obama’s initial announcement, the policy still has stringent requirements. Beneficiaries must have immigrated at a young age, and they need a high school education. Yet despite DACA’s restrictions, the policy has proven controversial. While Democrats have cheered DACA as a step towards immigration reform, Republicans have denounced DACA as an example of executive overreach. The conservative organization Heritage Action for America, for instance, has accused DACA of leading “residents of foreign lands [to] illegally enter the U.S.” Indeed, according to Heritage Action, Obama’s amnesty policies make undocumented immigrants believe that “they will not be returned home.”
by Humera Gul After the 2016 presidential election, the United States of America has been welcomed with multiple new policies and ideas. Recently, President Donald Trump decided to close the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This has been in the news a lot and there are many different opinions from both parties. Around 800,000 immigrants came to the United States as children to live their lives and work here legally. Now the question is, what is the DACA program?
Currently, there are 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States; 6 million of those immigrants are Mexican-born (Preston). Within that undocumented population are individuals who were brought to the States as children. These individuals have grown up in the American culture and consider themselves American, but struggle with being treated as second class citizens due to their undocumented status. On June fifteenth of 2012, the Obama Administration announced the executive order Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). This order will allow immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children to apply for work permits and avoid deportation (Hennessey and Bennett). President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is not only beneficial to it applicants but also to the United States as a whole.
At the start of September, Donald Trump terminated a program and in turn put fear into the hearts of nearly 800,000 people and their friends and family. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was a program that was made to replace the DREAM Act (a policy that was not approved by Congress which would have created a path towards citizenship for “illegal” immigrants that came to the United States as children). DACA was put into effect in 2012 by former President Barack Obama through an executive order. This policy protects immigrants who, as children, were either illegally brought to the United States or were brought legally but then stayed past their visas’ expiration dates. DACA provides this specific group of immigrants with protection from deportation, a social security number, and a work permit; however, it is not a way of gaining legal status. Not only are the qualifications for eligibility specific and limiting, but the application process itself is expensive, extensive, long, and it has to be done every two years.
Kevin Beck presented some information to us about day labors in New York. The part that stood out was that the community around the designated labor site was perceived to be an area where there was an excess of crime even though there had been no real record of such an event. This claim of crime contributed to the shutdown of the only legal means that unauthorized immigrants had to obtain work within the city (Beck). A similar situation happened in Manassas, Virginia where the exclusionary ordinance that was passed in city council was based purely on anecdotal evidence that there was a rise in crime caused by the “illegal immigrants”. When the facts were examined, there was actually a consistent yearly drop in crime in the city (Eric Byler,
Home Land security statistics on immigration verifies that there are approximately 11 million illegal immigrants who reside in the United States. In Arizona, there is an estimate of 460,000 unauthorized immigrants in 2009. (United States). Arizona borders with Mexico and it is implied that the majority of the illegal immigrants are of a Mexican background. These figures are understandable disturbing to Arizona’s local government primarily and the nation as a whole. The large influx of illegal immigrants is causing severe economic and social problems. Prisons, schools, and hospitals are the institutions that receive the direct blows of the state’s immigration problems. For these reasons, law makers in the State of Arizona justify their new “suspicious” immigration law (Matthews Mark K).
This law was enacted by President Bill Clinton and was meant to give the federal government more authorization to detain and deport non-citizens (Executive Justice). The (DACA) Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order was expanded in 2012, this is supposed to help protect children that have been brought to the U.S.; however, they must meet many requirements (executive justice). (DAPA) Deferred Action for Parental Accountability, is a law that grants ''differed action" to non-citizens with children that are United States citizens (executive justice). The Haitian Refugee Fairness Act, and because of this act 60,000 to 80,000 Haitians who are trying to seek refuge are going to become United States citizens and without applying for a visa (Stevens, J. 2013). The Haitian Refugee Fairness Act is a prime example of what this country was built on and what it stands for “Justice and Liberty for all”. However, there are many laws that show kindness and Justice, others shower uncertainty and judgment. As there are many more laws on deportation this is a small overview on the debate taking place among law makers and citizens. With so many different deportation laws, they are said to be some of the most complicated laws in the U.S. (how to stop
The lives of millions of immigrants are affected everyday due to limited access to acquiring legal citizenship. Out of that group there are 2.1 million children and young adults under the age of 18 that are eligible for permanent citizenship at this time (The DREAM Act). In 2001 Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch presented a Development Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act that provides a path to becoming a legal citizen. The DREAM Act has yet to be passed, but there is a temporary Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)(The DREAM Act). The DREAM Act will provide options and opportunities for people to continue their path of life in America. The DREAM Act should be passed as it will benefit our economy, positively affect and strengthen our military, along with increased access to education.
“What makes someone American isn’t just blood or birth but allegiance to our founding principles and faith in the idea that anyone from anywhere can write the next chapter of our story.” - President Barack Obama. The United States is the melting pot of the world. The great country of American was built on immigration. Look around, so many people have ancestor that risked everything to come to the United States to make something of their lives, and the lives of their children. If it weren’t for immigration, we may not be where we are today. Immigration reform is the term used in political discussion regarding changes to current immigration policy of a country (Immigration Reform, para. 2). In 2013 the Senate passed the immigration reform bill that would give a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. If the government passed Immigration Reform there would be many benefits to our economy, and to the individuals looking for a better future. For example, immigration increases the efficiency of the U.S. economy, it enables entrepreneurs to come to America, it brings increased national security, and immigration reform can reduce the deficit (Furchtgott-Roth, 4
President Obama’s order Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) awards employment and education opportunities as well as a short-term break from deportation to illegal immigrants that were brought to U.S. as children. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented
The notion that recent Latino immigrants are harbingers of crime and adverse social behaviors has no basis in truth, and in fact, it has been shown that immigrants may in fact have an opposite effect on neighborhood crime. In his article, Sampson (2008) considers the concept of the “Latino Paradox” – the fact that Hispanic Americans often score higher on a wide range of social indicators than expected (including those related to crime), given their socioeconomic disadvantages – comparing and contrasting it with his research collected on Latino immigrant populations in Chicago. Through a case study in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, Sampson suggested that higher rates of immigration in a neighborhood effectively reduces crime rates. The researchers found a significantly lower rate of violent crime among Mexican-Americans compared to Blacks and Whites in the same areas.
The thought of arriving immigrants in any host country has been accompanied by reactions of exclusion, and continues to expand throughout the years. During any social illness, immigrants tend to be the first to be held responsible by their recipient societies. Most crimes are associated with immigrants due to the fact that they may not posses the same socio-economics status as natives. Another contributing factor is the media that conducts numerous stories that highlight the image of immigrant crimes to recall the alleged difference between native and foreign born. Undoubtedly, the correlation between immigration and crime has become one of the most controversial discussions in current society. As we enter a new era, immigrants will have more impact on society than ever before (Feldmeyer, 2009).
While immigration for our country is good the ability to become a legal citizen has become insanely hard therefore leading immigrants to illegally cross our border, which negatively impacts our country.