Dreamers are facing a nightmare of a future

Even though this young lady has been living in the shadows for years, she is an excellent student at a very prestigious university in the United States, and is doing very well academically in all of her classes. In fact, she has a 4.0 average.

However, these past weeks in 2018 have been difficult for her. She believes her future in the United States is uncertain, and is con-

sidering returning to live with her grandmother in Mexico.

If she goes, she will divide her family since two of her brothers were born here and are American citizens. This woman is a Dreamer with Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA) status. So, we begin a new year with the same doubts and fears over immigration. Our leaders are now at an important point to face a deadline to preserve DACA Deferred Action for Children Arrivals program.

There will be a terrible humanitarian crisis if DACA ends because this program protects about 800,000 young people. These persons were brought to the United States as children by undocumented parents or family members. They are NOT legal through no fault of their own.

These Dreamers have lived in this country for most their entire lives. This highly organized group of young people argue that after being raised and educated in the United State, they are Americans who only lack legal recognition. Their dominant language is English and their customs and experiences are very American. President Barack Obama created this DACA program by executive order in 2012. DACA affords these young people a renewable twoyear period of deferred action from deportation and a work permit. In September of 2017 President Donald Trump announced that he would end DACA in March of 2018, but called on Congress to come up with a solution to keep the program in place.

Advocates in this nation have urged the passage of the DREAM Act -- the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act -- to provide a pathway to citizenship for the DACA youth. In early January President Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers met to discuss a measure that would keep DACA intact, but would also include Trump’s demands for a border wall and other security measures. That same day, January 9, 2017, a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco blocked Trump’s decision to end DACA, saying that the government must now start to accept renewal applications again from persons already in the program. This ruling will certainly be appealed. The United States government cannot agree on the status of the Dreamers or any immigration issue. So, on January 20th at midnight the United States Government was shut down since there was no agreement by the House, Senate and President on the passage of a budget bill that was tied to the future of DACA.

The Dreamers show us how broken our immigration system is. Dreamers are among the most motivated and successful of all groups in our society -- 97 percent of them are in school and/or working. U.S. businesses report that DACA recipients are vital to our economic future. About 800 executives from all sectors of the economy have agreed that DACA youths contribute more than $460 billion to our economy and pay $24 billion in taxes. We should be encouraging these young people and not creating obstacles for their future. These are good young people who wish to share their God-given talents with the nation, keep their families together and make their own contribution to the American dream. Almost 85 percent of all Americans agree that we should allow these young people to stay in the United States.

Of course, we need to secure our borders and protect ourselves from those who wish to harm us. However, border security, the wall and other immigration reforms should be handled separately from DACA. Congress should take its time to debate the issues properly and create an immigration system that reflects the needs and realities of a 21st-century economy. However, we should approach the issue of DACA from a moral, religious and compassionate perspective since the total reform of our broken immigration system should not be tied to DACA and the Dreamers. The Rev. Gus Puleo is pastor of St. Patrick Church in Norristown and adjunct professor of Spanish at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He is a graduate of Norristown High School and attended Georgetown University, where he received B.A. and B.S. in Spanish and linguistics. He has master’s degrees in Spanish, linguistics and divinity from Middlebury College, Georgetown University and St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania.