“Just so Senate Democrats know,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted last night as his party brought the nation ever closer to the brink of a government shutdown despite his party controlling the government, “DACA does not begin to face a deadline until March, at the earliest.” This, respectfully, is bullshit.
Donald Trump ended DACA in September 2017. Over 16,000 young people have already lost their work permits and protection from deportation, and every day McConnell and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan refuse to listen to the over 80 percent of Americans who want undocumented immigrant youth on a path to citizenship, another 122 DACA recipients fall out of status.
This is a national emergency, and McConnell is not just lying about it, he’s also enabling it by refusing to allow a vote on a bipartisan immigration compromise drafted by his colleagues. He can point fingers and dilly-dally like there’s no ongoing urgency whatsoever, but this is a crisis. All he has to do is actually listen to the immigrant youth telling him that:
“Anyone who says that we have more time for this insane congressional gridlock is lying,” said immigrant youth organization United We Dream. “Delay means deportations.”
“Today Congress has the opportunity to change this, so we no longer live with expiration dates,” tweeted Ciriac Alvarez, a DACA recipient and immigrant rights leader from Utah. “This is no way to live, no way to plan a life. 122 DACA recipients lose their status every day. We cannot wait, we need the DREAM Act now”:
Immigrant youth are living a nightmare while Congress runs out the clock, writes DACA recipient and immigrant rights leader Juan Escalante. “Congress needs to pass a spending bill by Friday to avoid a government shutdown, and this legislation may or may not include a DACA fix”:
Personally, I have been worried about how I will help sustain myself, pay my bills and help my family from time to time with some of their expenses. But one of the main things that keeps me up at night is the thought of how other Dreamers are processing current events.
“Right now, Dreamers are dealing with an insurmountable number of problems,” Escalante continues. “Expiring work permits means losing the job that helps pay the bills. Losing a driver’s license means being unable to travel or drive anywhere in the United States. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. The real stress for many DACA recipients comes from the constant seesawing that Congress and the White House put on in full display across news outlets.”