In a letter featuring more than 1,800 signatories,numerous governors, over 130 mayors, over 200 state legislators, and a host of faith, legal, community, and law enforcement leaders tell immigrant youth “we are ready to defend you,” calling on the Trump administration ”to preserve” the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and protect undocumented immigrant youth. “We also encourage President Trump and Republicans and Democrats in Congress to enact legislation that replaces fear and uncertainty with permanent protection for Dreamers,” the letter states:
Since June 2012, nearly 800,000 of these young people who came to the United States as children have come forward, passed background checks, and received permission to live and work in America. With DACA, they have advanced their education, started small businesses, and more fully established themselves as integral members of our society.
Ending DACA means all of these young people would be at risk of deportation and separation from their families and our communities; this would be senselessly cruel.
Ending DACA and removing hundreds of thousands of young men and women from our workforce also would cost the country an estimated $460.3 billion in lost Gross Domestic Product over a decade and tens of billions more in lost contributions to Medicare and Social Security, and force businesses to incur $3.4 billion in turnover costs.
The letter, featuring the governors of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Virginia calls on Congress to do more than just sustaining DACA by ultimately passing the bipartisan DREAM Act of 2017, which would give permanent protections to immigrant youth and put them on a path to citizenship.
Currently, bipartisan DREAM Act bills sit in both houses of Congress. “
Nearly 8 in 10 voters support allowing DREAMers to remain permanently in the country,” notes the Center for American Progress, “including almost three-quarters of Trump voters.”
