While marching, participants held signs and chanted. Chants included phrases such as "Immigrant rights are human rights," "No hate, no wall, America is home to all," and "Hands too small, can't build a wall." Handheld signs included messages such as "I Have A Dream #DefendDACA," "No Person is Illegal," and "Todos Somos Immigrantes / We Are All Immigrants." As an immigrant myself, I found it especially important to join the march for these issues.
When I was three years old, my parents, along with my sisters and I, migrated from Uruguay to the United States. My parents moved to Tennessee on a work visa, and were eventually granted permanent residency for the entire family. Every ten years, we were to renew this permanent residency, and after five years of being a resident, we would be eligible to apply for citizenship. At the age of 18, I put forth the $600 application fee, studied up, and went through the six month long process of getting my citizenship. At any point throughout this 15 year process, I could have easily found myself living in the United States illegally. As is the case for many people, my parents could have brought me to the United States illegally or could have let my paperwork expire, and I would have been facing the same fate as the 700,000 DACA recipients in the U.S. today.
My many friends that are "dreamers" have built up their entire lives here in the United States. They have lived in the U.S. for as long as I have, they are in college, have jobs, pay taxes, are married, have children, and for them to be deported to a country that they hardly know, would completely change their reality. I myself do not know what I would do if I had to leave my entire life here in the United States, and go back to Uruguay. I don't know how anything is set up there and I only have a limited Spanish vocabulary. Fortunately, I would still have family there that would be able to support me throughout the transition. However, many DACA recipients might even be in much worse shape than I am, not speaking the language at all and maybe not even having any relatives left in their countries of origin, just to name a few of the possible challenges. If DACA was fully terminated with no alternative path to citizenship or legal residency set in place, and all 700,000 of the recipients were in fact deported to their countries of origin, the United States would effectively be creating an entire generation of displaced people, forced to leave everything they know behind and to essentially restart their lives in a different country.
Sources: Snell, Kelsey, et al. “Trump Signs Funding Bill, Bringing Shutdown To An End.” NPR, National Public Radio, 22 Jan. 2018, www.npr.org/2018/01/22/579603941/shutdown-day-3-senate-plans-midday-vote-amid-active-negotiations.
