How would you feel if by the time you finished college, thousands of dollars in debt, opportunities were limited because the government planned to revoke your work permit ending the possibility of you ever having a well-paid job?
This was the sentiment of nearly 800,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students this past June 16, 2017.
Their angst was increased when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it intended to repeal the executive order by President Barack Obama that expanded the DACA program.
The Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was created on June 15, 2012. From its inception, DACA was by no means a way to offer legal status to someone who was in the United States illegally.
The intent of Obama’s executive order was to provide students, who have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives, with a Social Security number and a work permit so they could generate tax revenue.
There was never even a compromise from the U.S. government to legalize DACA recipients’ status in the future. Instead, they are just used as piggy banks. DACA recipients are constantly threatened to have all of their privileges removed if they don’t pay their fees on time.
Shortly after the current administration threatened to end DACA, a federal court ordered the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to resume the requests to renew a grant of deferred action under DACA. Recipients can renew their existing applications, however new applications are no longer being accepted. The government is not doing any favors to DACA recipients by letting them stay in the country for a longer period of time — as they want us to believe.
According to a recent report from the Center for American Progress, the national gross domestic product (GDP) could take a $460.3 billion hit by the recension of DACA.
California and Texas may be hit with the hardest blows to their GDP’s, with $11.6 billion and $6.2 billion in potential annual losses respectively.
Those who do not support DACA argue that it only encourages the illegal immigration of minors, which has doubled in recent years — especially those from Mexico.
However, the migration of thousands of Mexican minors seeking refuge from poverty, since 2012, is largely due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) agreement between U.S., Canada and Mexico.
NAFTA’s birth in 1994 marked the first blow in the slaughter of the middle class in Mexico.
A New York Times article, published in 2013, said because of the NAFTA agreement, heavily subsided U.S. corn markets caused a food crisis in Mexico.
Currently, 25 percent of the Mexican population doesn’t have access to their basic food needs and it is estimated that one-fifth of Mexican children suffer from malnutrition.
Who is really to blame for the $7.4 billion that the American citizens have to pay for DACA each year?
The Mexican parents who brought their kids to the U.S. illegally because they were hungry, or the U.S., the 12th richest nation in the world according to businessinsider.com, that is starving them for profit.