DACA benefits friends among us

Remember Ayded Reyes? She was the Southwestern College kid busted by a cop for being in a park with her boyfriend after curfew in 2011. When he asked her for identification her college ID was not good enough for him. She told the cop she did not have a Social Security number and he turned her over to federal agents who promptly arrested her and prepared her for deportation to Mexico.

Reyes had been brought to the United States by her parents when she was 3 years old. She spent the majority of her life here and, as a stellar athlete and college student, she was as American as hamburgers, french fries and Budweiser. But for lack of a piece of paper or a cosmic roll of the dice, Reyes was not considered a citizen and she was on the verge of finding herself shipped off to a country she had no attachment to save her ancestry.

Intervention from Congressman Bob Filner and a subsequent Obama administration policy allowed Reyes to be released. She’d later leave Southwestern College for CSU San Marcos and excelled in track there and would later carry on with her life.

Since 2011 the federal government introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA allows certain undocumented people who entered the U.S. as minors to receive deferred action from deportation and the opportunity to obtain a work permit.

It is a fair, humane program that’s a win-win for most reasonable people. It allows young people to stay in this country attend school and work legally. Schools get money for bodies in seats, the economy gets a boost from money spent on necessities and luxuries and government pockets benefit from the steady trickle of payroll and sales taxes.
No doubt Reyes could have benefitted from DACA that fall night in 2011. And since then surely thousands of other young people with promising futures have.

But attorneys general in Texas and other states want to end the program and are threatening to sue the Trump administration in an effort to stop the exemptions. The legal action, coupled with the administration’s already aggressive hunt for undocumented immigrants by ICE officials, has immigrants rights activists nervous.

During a press conference earlier this week, Alliance San Diego announced an effort to encourage undocumented immigrants to determine if they are eligible for DACA. The Ready Now San Diego program gives people access to legal resources that could help people stay in the country legally, keeping students in school, fathers and mothers working and communities in tact.

Opponents will say sons and daughters must suffer for the sins of their parents. Undocumented is undocumented and those without credentials must be deported. But that harsh, myopic rhetoric does not consider that for every person they want to deport is a person, like them, trying their best to contribute and get by the best they know how.