Opinion: DACA students deserve chance to suceed

Rayshaun Stevens, Columnist

All children deserve a chance to succeed in America, especially if they are undocumented and taken away from their families. 

Good thing there is a government program to help those children… but for how long? 

In 2012, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was created to protect immigrant children who were bought here illegally by their parents from being deported. 

You are able to get a Social Security Card, build your credit score and apply for a credit card, and given a chance to obtain a work permit to provide for themselves when they reach the required working age with healthcare benefits. 

DACA was created by Barack Obama while he was in office, 30 years after a Supreme Court decision barring public schools from charging undocumented immigrant children tuition. 

As of recently, President Trump has taken DACA to the Supreme Court to try and cancel the program because it was an “overreach of authority;” which is no surprise especially when his biggest concern of the U.S. is immigration. 

If canceled, this will leave more than 700,000 immigrant children with no support if their parents aren’t with them and raises the chance of them being deported. 

They also lose the protection provided for work authorization, which means they will be out of a job and have no other way to provide for themselves. 

It will make higher education less accessible since DACA allows children to pay in-state tuition for colleges, even school before college since it allows the children to attend school with no charge.

I never understood what President Trump thinks he will get out of this program, but so far I don’t see how canceling this organization will benefit the U.S. or what we were supposed to gain from this. 

This program provides an opportunity for many young children to make a living for themselves since they aren’t already documented, it leads them down the path to gain citizenship in their future when they become adults. 

Trump always wanted immigrants to become legal but never gave them the option, he only tried to throw them out through ICE agents. 

Now this time, he is taking that opportunity away from many who may be fired or were on the journey to have citizenship in this country. 

And while he says this was an overreach of authority, I could name numerous times when Trump has taken action that overreached his boundaries.  

It’s always shameful when there is somebody in office who supports all people, including those who are here undocumented and trying to gain citizenship (which is also hard to access I might add). 

The president’s job should be making life easier for anybody who decides to live here, but it seems like it gets harder and harder as years go on; a cycle that needs to be put to an end. 

Rayshaun Stevens is a freshman journalism and poltical science major. He can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]