Look Left, Look Right, Step Up by The Gent

Ten years after then-President Obama established the DACA program that shields over 600,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from deportation, many remain uncertain of their future. 75% of U.S. adult citizens say they favor granting permanent legal status in these cases, yet the program lingers. Our Congress is embarrassing “window dressing.”

DACA recipients had to arrive in the U.S. by age 16 and before 2007, to qualify. For those enrolled in the program, which offers work permits, efforts to pass a legislative solution have repeatedly failed, leaving DACA recipients in the same demoralizing position 10 years later. This year, most of the nation's 100,000 undocumented high school graduates are ineligible for the program due to its restrictions. The time is not now to pass the bill to give them permanent residence and eventual citizenship. The time was 10 years ago ... How sad, that every year, we have gone on without providing permanency for 800,000 DACA recipients and many more who are vulnerable to deportation because of a court order in Texas. We have almost a million young people who have given everything, many of them were the frontline workers. They saved the lives of our neighbors. Why can't we give them the dignity to stop simply surviving? Can this nation ever be charitable, again? What message is America sending those one million young people?