In the large conference room at Oglethorpe, as late afternoon sunrays turn the room golden, I find myself sitting around a long table on Thursday with our college dean, one of our counselors, and a dozen students who have shown up to talk about the threat to DACA (immigration Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and what it might mean in their already uncertain lives.
One young woman trembles with brimming tears as she explains that she doesn’t want to “come out” as DACA, even in a sympathetic community, because she is too afraid to be exposed to ridicule, criticism and shame. Another explains that her mother is begging her to stay silent, terrified that revealing her status, even in protest, will make it that much easier to deport her. The college staff is trying to explain that we will do everything we can to help these students stay in college, in the event that they are stripped of their ability to work and to drive to campus. Then we begin to talk about the fact that most people don’t even know what DACA is and what it means to each of these students, who on any other day would simply be another earnest young person tromping the halls and quads of our bucolic campus. Instead, they are clustered in this conference room, a group apart: feeling unwanted, threatened, isolated and almost without an identity. One of the young women with dark hair and huge black eyes looks at us from the end of the table and says simply, “I am DACA. If I’m not DACA, I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m nobody.”
DACA has allowed 800,000 young people like these students (who have never been arrested, caused trouble or had any record) to come into the thriving heart of America: not to become citizens, but to work legally, to drive, to go to college, and to have status. Status. What an interesting word — and how heartbreaking a thing to contemplate losing at the tender age of 19 or 20.
In my 13 years at Oglethorpe, I’ve watched in awe as these Dreamers work two or three jobs, commute from home, study like fiends, become leaders on campus, and take advantage of every opportunity we can find them. I’ve been honored to write letters of recommendation for these students to graduate school, law school, and medical school.
They’ve made Oglethorpe proud. In reality, they should make all of America proud. Instead, in this room — and in somber rooms all across the country — young people with big dreams and a love for this country have been targeted as “undesirable,” “alien,” and “illegal” – and that is not only morally wrong, but it also makes no economic sense for our country. How can it possibly profit us to turn away the very people who embody the things that have made America truly great: qualities like creativity, grit, commitment, imagination, determination, innovation, and courage? And how can we forsake America’s promise that with hard work and dedication, you can make something wonderful of your life, you can contribute to your country and community, you can succeed here?
For the sake of the Dreamers, we cannot let this stand. And for the soul of America, we must not.
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