DACA Argumentative Essay

1378 Words3 Pages

“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

Open Document