WCU students stage pro-DACA rally

Students urge Congress to pass legislation to protect ‘Dreamers’

Each day that Congress delays acting on the Dream Act, approximately 122 people will lose their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) protection. On Tuesday, scores of students at West Chester University staged a rally to remind local lawmakers of the severity of the situation.

“We are here to put pressure on our elected officials to advocate for this,” said Norma Montesino organizer of the rally, one of dozens that were put on around the country by Organizing for Action volunteers and other grassroots activists in support of the Dream Act.

Montesino, a student at West Chester University, said 900 young people in U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello’s 6th Congressional District are eligible for DACA. Some estimates put the cost of DACA recipients being pushed from the workforce in Costello’s district at $23 million.

DACA has allowed nearly 800,000 young people who came to the United States as children to live, work, and study without fear of detention and deportation. When President Donald Trump terminated the program on Sept. 5, 2017, he gave the 154,000 DACA recipients whose protections were set to expire between then and March

5, 2018, just 30 days to submit costly and arduous renewal applications.

“This is a human issue,” Montesino said. “This is about human rights. We should not be criminalizing parents who sacrificed their lives to bring their children here for a better life.”

Scores of students held up signs supporting the cause, and some students who passed by signed a petition encouraging Congress to take action.

“We want to put pressure on our elected officials to say no matter what party you are from, we are coming for you,” said James Cersonsky, director of the Pennsylvania Student Power Network. “Nobody should live in fear of being taken from their home in the middle of the night and deported, just because our government is racist and xenophobic. Student immigrants are innocent. People need to know what’s at stake.”

Geetha Ramanatahan, a professor at West Chester University, attended the rally to show her support. She helped to line the sidewalk with shoes and slippers, symbolic of DACA recipients who have been deported since the program was terminated earlier this year.

“All of us support this strongly,” she said. “We want the mayor (of West Chester) to issue a proclamation supporting this.”

The DACA program was formed through executive order by former President Barack Obama in 2012 and allows certain people, called Dreamers, who came to the U.S. illegally as minors to be protected from immediate deportation. Recipients are able to request “consideration of deferred action” for a period of two years which is subject to renewal. Deferred action does not provide lawful immigration status.

According to the American Center for Progress, 95 percent of DACA recipients last year were working or in school, 54 percent bought their first car, 12 percent bought a home and 21 percent of DACA recipients work in education and health services, the highest of any other industry. DACA recipients made an average wage last year of $13.96 per hour.

Organizing for Action (OFA) is a non-partisan, issue advocacy organization committed to growing the grassroots movement by training, organizing and empowering a new generation of progressive leaders who seek to make real and lasting change in their communities.

FRAN MAYE — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA West Chester University students hold signs at a pro-DACA rally Tuesday on university grounds.

A West Chester University student signs a petition Tuesday calling on Congress to preserve DACA and protect the Dreamers.

FRAN MAYE — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA Geetha Ramanatahan, a professor at West Chester University, looks at a line of shoes at a pro-DACA rally at the university Tuesday. The shoes are symbolic of 900 people locally who are eligible for DACA.