OKPOLICY.ORG
By O’Colly Editorial Board
We are at history’s mercy. Our actions today decide what our children and grandchildren will one day read in textbooks.
How will they talk about the Dreamers? What if one of our sons or daughters come home from school and ask us if we ever knew a Dreamer?
On Tuesday, about 100 students, faculty and staff took time out of their day to stand up for what they believe in. The O’Colly editorial board commends and stands with OSU’s DACA students against President Donald Trump’s decision. It is heartless, cowardly and short-sighted.
If the White House is truly concerned with criminals and smugglers at the heart of the illegal immigration crisis, ending DACA is not a place to start.
DACA students live with constant scrutiny, knowing even a serious misdemeanor, like a DUI or possession of a controlled substance, could mean deportation. To say they are part of the problem is ignorant and asinine.
More than 9,000 Oklahomans qualify for DACA, according to a 2012 Oklahoma Policy Institute estimate. Those Oklahomans likely had no say in their parents’ decision to come to America illegally or overstay their visa.
Many know America, not Mexico or Latin America, as their home. Some don’t speak enough Spanish to continue their education or use a degree they’ve worked for in America.
Others have spent the past five years not only working and studying under DACA but actively seeking a legal path to citizenship and spending thousands of dollars on immigration attorneys.
Turning away nearly 800,000 hard-working, taxpaying people is definitively cruel and un-American.
We cannot sit idly by and watch this happen. Legal arguments aside, it’s inhuman to do this to so many people. Call your representative back home or here in Oklahoma. Do everything you can to make sure congress fixes this mistake.
If we don’t, we’ll have to explain this to our children and grandchildren. They will read about the Dreamers and wonder why our country acted this way.
http://www.ocolly.com/opinion/editorial-ending-daca-cruel-un-american/article_df2ab8b2-9296-11e7-a60c-2b24f55cdfe2.html
