As I come to the end of this, I have realized that I learned so much more than what I have already known about DACA. If you don’t recall I would like to welcome you to read my first post. There you will find a brief background and purpose as to why I decided to write about this program.
Moving further and concluding my last post, I decide to use a short documentary titled “What Dreamers Gained From DACA, and Stand to Lose” in which explains the situation with these DACA recipients by interviewing young immigrants in the DACA program. We can already tell from the title of this documentary that these Dreamers will talk about they gained from this beneficiary program and what is at risk now that DACA ended. Many have taken little importance to this documentary but after watching it, I interrupted as an inspiring film that shows how beneficiary the DACA program is for students not to mention, eye opening for those who are against it because it diminishes false critiques. Furthermore, we should take the chance to put ourselves in these young Dreamers shoes and try to sympathize with them
The documentary helps us empathizes with DACA recipients because we get to know a little about them. They introduce themselves, state how old they were when they came to this country, how old they are in present day, how long they have lived in the United States and some say were they were born in.
There has definitely been a misunderstanding that all of the dreamers are only from a certain area. When the documentary showed these young immigrants saying where they were born, I thought it was important because mostly everyone has that false misconception that they are all Mexican, which is not true at all. Bruna Bouhid for example, is one of the Dreamers from this video and she says she was brought to the U.S at the age of seven and was born in Brazil, a South American country. In a recent post, Eugene Scott stated that “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is often centered on Latinos, and specifically Mexican immigrants. But the population that immigrated to the United States illegally as minors is much more diverse than that”. In fact, the uppermost countries in which these young immigrants come from are Asia, Europe, Caribbean and of course the Latin countries. Not to mention that, “Tens of thousands of young people from South Korea, the Philippines, India, Jamaica, Tobago, Poland and Pakistan arrived in the United States as minors and have been protected from the threat of deportation since DACA was established in 2012.” With that said, we can diminish that common critique and instead flourish this new sense that these young people are not all Mexicans.
In another pattern, these young people and their families are mostly fearful now that the program ended. Many of them mention how afraid they are to be separated, to be deported to a country they are not familiar with. For instance, we have Bruna who says, “every time my parents call me after 11 pm my heart is racing”. What does this mean exactly? This means that for her to receive a call that late at night can most likely result in getting deported or her parents getting deported. That is a feeling no one ever should experience because it is horrible, I can sincerely say I have experienced something like that. My grandma once called me crying on the phone and I couldn’t think of anything else but the thought of my mom getting deported and I burst out into tears not knowing the real reason of the phone call.
Another individual from the video, Angelica Villalobos , sadly explains how she has been adapting her children for the worst case scenario, “ I have been preparing my kids, you know these are the risks, this can happen to your dad or to me” This can be truly heart breaking, for a mother to tell her children there is a great possibility of not seeing them again.
In another scene, many of these dreamers are extremely furious and feel betrayal. Reyna Montoya feels anger and resentment towards the government. She expresses her emotions and says, “Can you imagine? The government made a promise to us: come forward, come out of the shadows and we’re going to promise you that you are not going to be in deportation proceedings.” These young people were hiding, they were on their best behavior, they have been living in fear since they got here. DACA came and diminished their fears, but now that it is gone their fears are back and they go back to their hiding places. Luis Angel Aguilar a dreamer for the documentary describes this situation as a “tug of war” he continues and says, “when you are undocumented you are always just aware of the situations, the locations, who you are talking to, how you are interacting with folks, ensuring that you don’t do anything that could bring attention to you because you live a life of shadows” Can you just envision yourself constantly being paranoid that someone might give you in or that you are stopped by a cop and asks for your legal documentation, or even just the way you talk to people might give a sense that you are undocumented? Like I mentioned before these young people live that daily not only them but other illegal immigrants who didn’t have the opportunity of getting into the program.
The reason I was drawn to this documentary was because I wanted to show and for my readers to get to know these dreamers for who they truly are and not for something someone who is against made up. It is important to know the truth because the program is ending for the wrong reasons. I have many family members and friends who were in this program and are now struggling with what to do next. My biggest take home form all of my post is just to simply be fully informed of this program and the Dreamers because we cannot just assume and critique something we have no clue about.
DACA;Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals 