www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/04/dreamers-daca-program-under-threat
Many of the almost 600,000 current Dreamers are essential workers who have supported the nation’s classrooms and hospitals throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. They are also sports stars, award-winning journalists and academics, or successful in countless other walks of life.
Dreamers pump billions into the US economy and, according to the progressive thinktank the Center for American Progress, households with Daca recipients pay almost $10bn in taxes each year.
When the Dream Act was introduced on Capitol Hill in 2001, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento coincidentally arrived in Buena Park, Orange county, California, from Brazil at the age of 14.
Since 2001 at least 11 versions of the Dream Act have been introduced in Congress but never passed.
“We really see the cruelty of what Texas and the other plaintiffs are asking for, it’s just anti-immigrant rhetoric,” said Macedo do Nascimento, who now lives in Baltimore. “It’s all part of this narrative that mostly brown people shouldn’t be in this country.”
Her current Daca protections expire in March 2024 and Dreamers once again wait in anxious limbo, first for Hanen’s ruling then, if he agrees to shut down Daca, the likely Biden appeal all the way back up to the now-conservative-controlled supreme court.
“Daca recipients are allowed to buy houses, buy cars, and have these long-term debts,” said Macedo do Nascimento, 37, referring to the typical American burdens of student loans, mortgages and vehicle financing. “But we can’t plan a family. We deserve a path to citizenship, it will allow us to have a sense of security.”
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