The Battle for the Dreamers in a Democracy at Risk

David Torres

The recent national-level support that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has received publicly from business entities, as well as universities and personalities from the academic, diplomatic, national security and intelligence realms, has become one more example of the real benefits that the United States has received with the regularization, although temporary, of around 800,000 young people covered by this immigration protection.

That is, this time DACA and its beneficiaries are backed not only by pro-immigrant groups who have fought tirelessly since the creation of this program under the prior administration but also by this other, more specialized, realm, with an even deeper platform, especially when it comes to the analysis and results of an economic-migration reality that belongs to all, directly or indirectly.

In their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the form of amicus curiae, more than 140 large businesses state clearly, up front, that they contribute trillions of dollars annually to the U.S. economy by employing millions of workers, young people called Dreamers among them.

In that way, as co-participants in this labor relationship, this group of businesses demonstrates, within the contents of this brief, that they share a legal and moral responsibility with those who are the object of elimination by today’s government, which wants to discard them as if they were not contributing just like any other of these companies’ employees.

Among these companies are Google, Facebook, Verizon, Tesla, Ikea, Twitter, Western Union, Starbucks, and IBM, just to mention some of the most well-known names. They declare that “immigrants have long been essential to our Nation’s growth and prosperity,” and have contributed important advances in science and technology.

But not only that. They also underline the fact that immigrants have also created businesses that generate around $775 billion in sales and provide for a large number of jobs, paying more than $300 billion in local, state, and federal taxes. On top of that, many of these companies are listed in the Fortune 500, explains the missive to the Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments in favor of and against DACA this coming November 12.

Eliminating DACA, these businesses assure in their brief: “will inflict serious harm on U.S. companies, all workers, and the American economy as a whole. Companies will lose valued employees. Workers will lose employers and co-workers. Our national GDP will lose up to $460.3 billion, and tax revenues will be reduced by approximately $90 billion, over the next decade.”

With this warning in mind, it is easy to understand why universities such as Brown, Harvard, and Yale, three of the most prestigious houses of study in the U.S. and abroad, added themselves to the cause to preserve DACA, with the goal of underlying even more the humanitarian and economic importance that these young Dreamers represent: who have consistently proven that they are an engine that has energized the present chapter of the migration history of the United States in every way.

But the stubbornness of the administration in attacking DACA, Dreamers, and their families, the majority of which are Latino in origin, has no limit. The U.S. leader has even dared to asked the Supreme Court Justices, via Twitter, to cancel the program, suggesting that legislators could “have a DEAL” so that the young people “stay in our Country in very short order,” only when DACA is terminated. Obviously, no sensible person would put faith in this proposal which only inspires distrust, especially when it comes from the man who attacked Dreamers and their families in a consistent and calculated way.

It is unbelievable how low this administration has sunk in addressing this humanitarian issue and, of course, how convenient that is for the system on which the functioning of society is based. Officials will continue to declare that these young people did not come legally to the country… and blah blah blah. It’s always the same song and the same excuse to misunderstand this unstoppable phenomenon that has existed from the beginning of humanity that is migration.

But one thing remains clear about this battle for Dreamers in which now the most powerful companies in the nation have joined in defense of these young people, who are American in every way except their documents: the more and more that this nation’s conscience is clarified, not only in relation to the issue of migration, but above all to show its rejection of the governmental anomaly that has become entrenched in the White House, we see that this administration has tried to govern from a cult of personality of he who holds the power, and not the Magna Carta that underlies the democratic structures at risk.

David Torres is a Spanish-language Advisor at América’s Voice.

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