Opinion: End of a dream for America’s DREAMers

By Jefferson Leiva
GSS Immigration/Video Editor

STOCKTON, California — For more than five long, anxious years, we believed that it wasn’t over. In our own echo chambers of social media, we saw and heard the passionate support of #DefendDACA. Hashtags and filters spread like wildfire, sparking hope among our immigrant community.

But with President Trump’s decision expected later today to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, I realize that we DREAMers have been waging a fight that we lost from the beginning.

From the time we arrived as children in America, we understood this fight was necessary. We were encouraged to find comfort in the shadows. There, we moved, whispered, protected and comforted each other. We agreed to forget faces and names. We normalized single-parent families, sweatshops and threats from our employers to turn us in.

Then, in 2012, President Barack Obama invited us to come out.

It was a black man who urged us brown DREAMers to explore life, liberty and happiness. For his trouble, he was attacked by a storm of criticism and lawsuits. Uneasily, yet trusting in the long shot of citizenship, we forfeited the comforts of the shadows — we took the gamble.

Obama’s invitation came with strict requirements including giving up information that made us exceptionally vulnerable. We filed our form I-821s, asking for consideration of deferred action; with our form I-765s, we requested the right to work. We handed over every report card and transcript. Every vaccine, medical record and bank statement became part of an official story that summarized our existence as aliens. We didn’t know five years later they would become our suicide notes.

DREAMers and their advocates are waging a war against the Trump administration. But it’s merely an extinction burst. These are our final sweat and blood-laden efforts to tear down the impenetrable wall of xenophobia with our bare hands.

Javier Palomarez, president and chief executive of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told CNN Monday that he would work “to the bloody end to try and convince this president to do the right thing by these 800,000 DREAMers who reside in this country.” Unfortunately, that will prove hard.  

Trump has promised to build a tall wall between Mexico and the U.S. To a president whose experience is in the world of real estate and construction, perhaps this will be his one true accomplishment. Metaphorically but also literally, Trump plans to use brick and mortar to lay down the foundation of division. This wall is not yet fully cemented, but already there are figures on top of the wall that look down on at our irrational attempts to remain here.

Documented Americans say they love us and perhaps some do. They love the 250 DREAMers who work at Apple. They love the doctors and paramedics who work on a daily basis to save lives.

They love Alonso Guillen, the DACA student who drowned while trying to rescue survivors of Hurricane Harvey. His body was recovered Sunday, just hours before news that President Trump might end DACA.

But told of the vulnerable 16-year-old who hasn’t found a foothold — the unemployed student, the working class immigrant still trying to reach his or her American Dream — they’ll laugh.

With President Obama’s invitation five years ago, we hoped xenophobia, racism, and discrimination would end. But we will forever be criminals, rapists and drug dealers in the eyes of an administration with xenophobic acolytes.

Sadly, it turns out the best thing a DREAMer could do is dream.

—Jefferson Leiva is GSS Immigration and Video editor. He recently graduated from Stagg High School in Stockton, California.

Featured photo: DACA and immigrant students staged a demonstration in 2014 at a church attended by Rep. Paul Ryan (D-Wisconsin) to rally support for DACA. Ryan asked President Donald Trump not to end the DACA program, saying “I believe that this is something that Congress has to fix.” Photo: Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association on Flickr.com/Creative Commons licensed.