Today, March 5th, is President Trump’s artificial deadline to end protections for the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. Last September he announced the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that provided temporary protection for Dreamers, and he gave Congress until today to enact a more permanent solution.  

Earlier this week, the Republican-led Senate failed to act on urgently needed legislation to protect young immigrants from deportation and fix the crisis President Trump created when he ended DACA. Driven by Trump’s coercive demands, senators tried to ransom Dreamers’ safety for a $25 billion slush fund to build a wall and further militarize our border communities.

At Alliance San Diego, a big part of our work focuses on immigrant integration.  We assist local immigrant communities through our numerous workshops on naturalization, DACA assistance, Know Your Rights events and more. These workshops would not be possible without the volunteers who are at every event. We spoke to one of our volunteers at a recent naturalization workshop, and she had a story that we needed to share. Below is her interview on why she wants to not only help others become a citizen, but why she wants to become a citizen herself.

Today, Alliance San Diego along with more than 250 national, state and local organizations sent a letter urging congressional leaders to enact permanent protections for Dreamers and reject the White House’s nativist wish list.

By Karen Bahena

Democratic leaders from the House and Senate welcomed the largest group of Dreamers to attend a State of the Union address. I stood in disbelief when I received an invitation and I want to thank my congressman, Scott Peters, (D-CA), for making the cordial invitation and standing with Dreamers like myself. It was a remarkable statement of resistance and it sent other members of Congress the message of urgency for a narrow, bipartisan bill that would protect Dreamers all across the country.