Campaign Action
Reyna Montoya, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and immigrant rights leader from Arizona, has been named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. Montoya came to the U.S. when she was just 13. With the help of DACA, Montoya graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in political science, and Grand Canyon University with a masters in education. Today, she works with Aliento, an organization that advocates for a younger generation of undocumented immigrant youth:
Montoya was honored in the "social entrepreneurs" category of people who are "leveraging business smarts to save the world."
She's in good company: Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai won in that category in 2016.
Among all of this, Montoya is worried about her future: Her DACA status expires next October.
"We are living in a very critical moment where people like me who are DACA recipients can be deported. Right now Congress has a choice whether to provide opportunity and a solution forward or deport people like me to countries where I don’t feel confident I would be able to thrive."
According to the Arizona Republic, “through Aliento, she works with children and teens who have been affected by deportation, teaching them to express themselves through art and to engage with political leaders.”
Montoya says she hope’s her Forbes honor “serves as an inspiration for other people to know that even if the past might be really hard, there are possibilities.” This message is more important than ever, as 800,000 lives hang in the balance. If Congress does not act soon on a clean DREAM Act, every single day 1,400 DACA recipients, like Montoya, stand to lose their work permits, protection from deportation, and be torn from the only country they’ve ever known as home.
"No matter what society and our current president says about us,” Montoya said, “at the end of the day, we are in charge, we have agency, we are resilient people who continue not only to fight but to innovate."