Emilee Rodriguez

Peter Chilson

HON380

01 May 2023

You Don't Have to Go Home, but You Can't Stay Here: DACA Kids and Their Experience

Think back to when you were a teenager and remember all of the milestones and new

responsibilities you had on the horizon. Maybe you’re a teenager waiting for your 16th birthday,

excitedly thinking about all the freedom you’ll have once you get your driver’s license. You

probably spent the past few weeks gloating to your younger siblings, shopping for used cars, and

dreaming of all the places you'll go. Or maybe you’re 18 years old, fresh out of high school and

ready to go to college to begin your adult life. Your education and career goals don't seem so far

away, and you dream of breaking into the field in the coming years. Perhaps you’re 15 sending

out job applications at any fast-food chain in town, hoping to get your first job and start earning

money to help your family.

These are, by any standards, normal teenage experiences that many US citizens have

lived through. Only, imagine your shock when you go to the DMV to get your license, try to fill

out a college application, or accept your first job and realize that you don't have any of the

necessary documents. You can't drive, go to college, or get a job, all because when you were a

small child, your parents took you and illegally entered the US to escape poverty, violence, or

natural disasters. These are who DACA was made to protect from these exact scenarios and

more.
What is DACA?
DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It is a program that was created in

2012 to help children of undocumented immigrants gain deferred action. Deferred action delays

deportation indefinitely, which effectively allows someone to live in the US during that time. It

also grants them the ability to get a work permit and work legally. Depending on the state,

DACA recipients can also get a driver's license and qualify for in-state tuition at state

universities (Benenson). Without DACA, these people are blindsided by the fact that they don't

have the correct documents to get a driver's license, get a job, or apply for college. They are also

threatened with possible deportation despite living in the U.S. for a significant part of their

childhood – on average, DACA recipients were seven years old when they arrived in the U.S.

(Library of Congress). As of 2020, there are over 16,000 DACA recipients living in Washington

state (Immigrants in Washington). Even now, there are many people who depend on DACA to

live the normal lives that most of us who grew up in the U.S. take for granted.

In 2012, President Obama introduced after a decade of failed attempts to pass the DREAM Act

in the U.S. The DREAM Act was like DACA. It attempted to allow undocumented children who

finished high school in the U.S. to gain deferred action in order to go to a U.S. university and

eventually gain citizenship after a few conditions were met, one of them being required military

service (Library of Congress). Unlike the DREAM Act, DACA wasn't being passed as a law –

instead, President Obama issued an executive branch memorandum to begin DACA, which

bypassed voting and allowed people to apply for DACA protections immediately.

Unsurprisingly, this created a lot of controversy in the U.S. political space. Luckily, the program

stood for two years on its own with no significant damage to the program itself – that doesn't

mean people weren't trying, it just means that their attempts weren't successful until 2014.
Two years after creating DACA, President Obama announced expansions to DACA and a new

parallel program called DAPA, or Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful

Permanent Residents. This news marked the beginning of the attacks on DACA. Almost

immediately, multiple states filed lawsuits, claiming the programs were illegal while many

politicians argued whether the president should be able to make these decisions on their own

(Totenberg). Luckily, the original DACA program survived, and applicants were still able to

receive benefits, but expanded DACA and DAPA were quickly torn apart. This left the programs

unsuccessful and their possible recipients still vulnerable. Soon enough, even future recipients of

the original DACA would feel the effects of these attacks on the programs.

Although DACA still stood after 2014, President Trump rescinded it in 2017. The Attorney

General stated the program was illegal because DACA is unconstitutional and an abuse of

executive power for allowing immigration processes to be circumvented (Totenberg). This left

people who were hoping to apply to the program feeling lost, scared, and uncertain. The good

news is that people who were receiving DACA benefits at the time were safe and could continue

to renew their permits and new applicants were being accepted, but they weren't being processed

(DACA Fifth Anniversary Stories). Even today in 2023, applications are being accepted but not

necessarily processed, effectively denying DACA benefits to applicants who need them.

According to an article from CNN written by Priscilla Alvarez, DACA is "hanging on by a

thread" after the attempts to entirely destroy it in 2017 (Alvarez). There's still hope, though.

While some are working to rebuild DACA to preserve the benefits that it grants to its recipients,

some are looking to other options. The Dream Act of 2023, if it passes, will replace DACA with

the goals of the original DREAM Act – basically everything DACA does but with a pathway to

citizenship, which would be hugely impactful to many people's lives if it were to pass.
It's clear that there is a lot of controversy surrounding DACA, the DREAM Act(s), and programs

like it. It makes sense considering how torn the U.S. is on the issue of immigration. However,

what we all can agree on is that children need to be protected, which was the purpose of DACA –

to protect children who had no say in whether or not their parents moved to the U.S. legally or

not. For many families with small children, they may not have been able to sit and wait to slowly

work their way through the immigration process. While some people were angry at the content of

DACA, others were upset that the president went above their heads and created the program

independently, referencing the slippery slope that it could lead to (Totenberg). Regardless, about

580,000 people rely on the program today, many of which are doctors, nurses, teachers, artists,

journalists, and other indispensable assets to our communities (Approximate active DACA

recipients - USCIS). This should show the importance of these programs to our country, despite

the controversial nature of the conversations surrounding them.

How DACA Affected My Life

I spent a large part of my childhood moving – this meant a lot of adapting to new places

and then abandoning them whenever my parents felt like it (or, at least, that's how it felt to me at

the time). My dad is in the military, so we lived wherever his job took him. I would always be a

little sad to move, but I knew I had no choice. After all, what would I do as a six-year-old? I

couldn't live on my own, and I knew I couldn't convince my parents to stay no matter how hard I

tried. I had no other family to live with, and my parents needed to move for work. If they didn't

move, they'd be giving up opportunities that would enable them to better support our family. So,

we'd pack up the house and move every two years, like clockwork. Some of these moves were

harder than others.

 The most significant move of my life was when my mom packed me, my two older

brothers, and the family dog into her SUV and drove us from Virginia to California. The trip

took us an entire week because she could only tolerate so many hours of driving with her less-

than-ideal passengers. Even though it was a whole week of driving, stopping at different iconic

landmarks, and sleepovers at hotels with the dog, I remember very little of this trip. I was only

seven at the time, so it isn't super surprising that I don't remember much. I actually remember

even less of my life before the move. I had spent much of my young life there, but none of it was

memorable. I refer to this time of my life as the part before I “became conscious.” Once I walked

into my new second-grade classroom, I have a few clear memories of my life. It's almost like I

gained a new consciousness where I actually remember my day-to-day life. Before that point, it's

basically static with a few muddled images in there somewhere. I remember some of the fuzzy

faces of my friends on the playground, and the sour cherry tree in our front yard, but that's

mostly it. I don't remember my school, my house, what we did for fun, what the community was

like, or the culture of the state.

Two years after that move, my parents got divorced and my mom took me and my

brothers to live in Bakersfield, California. It was the only place a newly single mother could

quickly find a semi-affordable house for her three kids and dog. I can't imagine the stress of

trying to find a place for a family to live in California on a single income. It was the best place

for people who were down-on-their luck, for people who needed a place to settle and quick. For

most of the community, it was a good place to live in an expensive (and immigrant-loving) state.

Life there isn't easy, though. The climate is nearly unbearable, the draughts are intense, and

because the wealth in the state isn't located nearby, the communities are underfunded and

overlooked by many people. According to a study done by Brandeis University, Bakersfield had
the worst childhood outcomes out of all metropolitan areas in the U.S., due to many factors such

as poverty, air-quality, and access to high-skill jobs, healthy food, and good schools (Sofer).

Looking at the bigger picture, it isn't the best place to end up as a kid. But it was better than

being homeless, and I actually value my time spent in Bakersfield specifically for the community

and friends I made while I was there.

Once I moved to Bakersfield, I began to have my first meaningful interactions with a

large immigrant population. Before then, most of my friends were just like me – children who

were born in the U.S. and were not faced with poverty. But now I was exposed to a whole new

culture and people who struggled in a way that I had never seen before. For some context,

according to the census, 19% of Bakersfield’s population are foreign born (U.S. Census Bureau

quickfacts: Bakersfield City, California). This is a little over 77,000 people. We can safely

assume that a significant number of these people were children when they moved. Many of my

friends or their parents would be included in this statistic. They were the exact people that would

benefit from DACA, DAPA, and any programs that come after them. When I think of DACA, I

think of how it benefits these communities. I think of all of the children who grew up in those

same communities I did, and how unfair it is that they aren't allowed to continue into their adult

lives the same way that I am. To clarify, I can't be sure how many of my friends and classmates

would've qualified for DACA. It wasn't a conversation that ever came up – we were kids, after

all. It isn't like I would just ask them their immigration status while we were playing jump rope.

But I can safely assume that my community benefits a lot from these programs.

I had never considered how much immigration would affect someone's life, and even

when I was in Bakersfield, I didn't realize the massive effects that being an immigrant would

have on my friends. At the time, all I thought about was the language barrier. My best friend
Martha was bilingual. She would speak English at school and with her friends, but at home she

would speak Spanish. Any time I went over to sleepover at her house, she would have to

translate for me and her parents. I remember many times her having to negotiate between my

parents and hers because if I wanted to stay the night on a Saturday, I would have to go to church

with them on Sunday morning. That was when I finally began to understand how isolating it is to

not speak the language around you – I already feared going to church but doing it when you don't

speak the language was one of the most stressful things I had to do.

I have vivid memories of my time with Martha, and I always admired her maturity and

confidence. I see now that she didn't have a choice. She couldn't be scared or irresponsible – her

family relied on her too much. My most vivid memory is watching her take calls for her parents.

It didn't matter who it was, if they caller spoke English, Martha was on the other end. We were

both ten at the time, and it seemed like a huge responsibility to me. It still does. She would talk

to people from the bank, people from the school, her father's customers, or anyone else that

couldn't understand Spanish. At that time in my life, I wouldn't have been able to take a call from

a stranger, I was far too timid. That was when I knew how lucky I was that my parents were able

to do these things by themselves. I wished that I could do something, and I wondered why there

weren't any resources for her family to be able to speak to someone in Spanish.

It was this exact moment that I believe set me on the trajectory I am following today. I

had never planned to be a teacher. In fact, my whole life I wanted to be a doctor. I dove headfirst

into learning about genetics, because I fully believed I would be a geneticist. It wasn't until I was

faced with college applications that my passion for teaching crept into my head. I remembered

my friends and their families who struggled to communicate between home and school. I thought

about how hard it was for me to learn Spanish, and it clicked. I wanted to teach English as a
second (or third, or fourth...) language to students who needed it. I wanted to help be a bridge

between schools and families that faced language barriers that school districts may not have the

resources to properly overcome. I wanted to go back in time and save Martha from translating

every assignment, note, report card comment and parent teacher conference. I wanted to do

whatever I could to give back to the communities that helped me develop a wider, more

empathetic worldview that I may have been ignorant of if they had not accepted me into their

lives.

When I see DACA being debated and dismantled, it hurts my heart. I imagine my friends

struggling to figure out how they're going to build their futures. It makes me angry to think that

people are attacking a program that serves to protect innocent children who have no choice in

whether or not their parents immigrated legally or not. Many parents didn't really have a choice

either – at least, not when it can take years to get a green card (Bier). I'll never know what it's

like to experience the uncertainty like these communities do, but I can try to relate it to my

biggest move that coincidentally occurred when I was the same age that most DACA recipients

move to the U.S.

When I think back on my big childhood move, I cannot imagine what it would be like for

me, at 15, to find out that I wasn't actually allowed to live in California. I can't fathom the fear

that I would hold in my young adult life knowing that I could be forced to move back to a place

where my only memories are of the sour cherry trees in our front yard and the muddled, fuzzy

faces of my friends on the playground – it would basically be moving to a whole new place,

completely unfamiliar to me. The comparison isn't quite right, but it is the closest I can come to

knowing how those kids feel. Many of them had the same childhood as I did, only they crossed

the US border while I crossed state borders. They have no memories of the place people want
them to go back to because they spent their childhood in American schools, reciting the pledge

of allegiance and studying our country's history each day, just like the rest of us. Just like me. No

matter where we come from, we are all capable of experiencing life-altering changes, big moves,

and facing new communities. I was lucky enough to be accepted by mine, and I hope that our

country can make more progress in accepting others as they accepted me. They are American,

and DACA gives them the chance to continue to live normally in America, as they should.
 Citations

Alvarez, Priscilla. “Federal Appeals Court Rules 2012 Daca Memo Unlawful and Sends Case
Back to Consider Biden Administration Version | CNN Politics.” CNN, Cable News
Network, 6 Oct. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/politics/court-rules-2012-daca-
memo-unlawful/index.html.
Approximate Active DACA Recipients - USCIS. 2020,
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/data/Approximate%20Active
%20DACA%20Receipts%20-%20March%2031%2C%202020.pdf.
Benenson, Laurence. “Fact Sheet: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).” National
Immigration Forum, 25 Oct. 2020, https://immigrationforum.org/article/fact-sheet-on-
deferred-action-for-childhood-arrivals-daca/.
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Long, Growing, and Inequitable.” Cato.org, 2019,
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doubled-green-card-backlogs-are-long#introduction.
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https://www.nilc.org/issues/daca/daca-fifth-anniversary-stories/.

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https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-washington.
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Sofer, Nomi. “Diversitydatakids.org Announces the Child Opportunity Index 2.0.”
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Totenberg, Nina. “Supreme Court Rules for Dreamers, against Trump.” NPR, NPR, 18 June
2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/18/829858289/supreme-court-upholds-daca-in-blow-
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