Markeshia Ricks Photo
Ramirez: Time to bring it home.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and state colleges and universities system President Mark Ojakian are calling on the president to stand by his promise to use his heart in deciding the fate of “dreamers.”
The Trump administration announced in September that it would scrap the Obama-era program known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. The program protected nearly 800,000 undocumented young immigrants, or dreamers, from deportation from the only home many have ever known. Dreamers had until Thursday to reapply to the program and pay nearly $500 to keep their legal protections through March 2018.
DeLauro, who along with fellow Democrats in Congress, is pushing for a clean DREAM Act, called the Trump administration’s decision to end DACA without a replacement “cruel and inhumane.”
“This did not have to happen,” she said during a roundtable discussion held at Gateway Community College’s downtown New Haven campus Friday. “And all of us who are engaged in this process are going to fight like hell to protect you and your opportunities. So many of us are really livid that this deadline exists and that your future has been placed in jeopardy.”
DeLauro at Gateway Community College.
State colleges and universities system President Mark Ojakian said dreamers in Connecticut are fortunate that they have champions in state government. The state university system takes in dreamers who are denied an education in states that don’t allow undocumented students to matriculate at publicly funded schools.
But he said even in Connecticut there is work to be done. For two years, he has advocated, with no luck, for dreamers to have access to the institutional financial aid that all higher education students in the state pay into. He said if Congress could pass the DREAM Act then undocumented students would have access to that pot of money and there would be no need for state legislation.
Ojakian urged Congress and the president to deal with immigration reform once and for all.
“When the president was talking about this issue he said he would deal with the issue with his heart,” Ojakian said. “Where is the heart in what he did? Mr. President, these are peoples’ lives. We need to be humane in how we deal with people.”
Ojakian.
Sergio Ramirez, a dreamer who came to New Haven when he was 9 years old and worked his way o DeLauro’s office as an intern, said Friday that the discussion about immigration is moving backward.
“We have to advocate and bring it home,” said Ramirez, who now works Junta for Progressive Action. “We need a clean DREAM Act and we need it soon.”
DeLauro said critics of DACA should know that the program is not a free ride. It had many requirements that included staying crime free, being enrolled in school and continuously in the country.
“This is no free ride,” she said.
She had some additional words for the president, particularly if Congress can’t or won’t act in time to help the dreamers impacted by the end of DACA.
“You’ve got a job,” she said. “Do your job. That’s what I say to the president of the United States.”