Status returns with the story of Sandra, a recipient of DACA who didn’t know she was undocumented until she was a teenager.
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Show Intro
Welcome to Season 2…This is Status. The show about how immigration impacts people. My name is Matt Horton, and I’ve been working on this season for a long time, now.
Also, check out that new show art! It looks great, doesn’t it?!
Shoutout to The Podglomerate for their help in creating the new art and just for their support in making this season come together. They’ve been incredible to me and the other creators that are a part of The Podglomerate.
So let’s get to what you’re here for. To start out the season, I’m going to be talking to recipients of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. What’s DACA? Well, let’s get into that.
What is DACA?
I want to do something I don’t usually do here on Status and get into the weeds a little bit about what we’re going to be talking about over the next few episodes. I think it’s important that we all know what it is we’re talking about. In August of 2001, Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. The DREAM Act. The DREAM Act was based on an earlier bill from April of that year, but the basics were the same. Both bills were an attempt to recognize that not all people who illegally entered or remained in the United States did so of their own accord. To say it more plainly, the children of undocumented immigrants, who would come to be known as DREAMers, should not be punished for the actions of their parents.
Different versions of the DREAM Act have been introduced to both chambers of Congress over the years. There were attempts to attach the text of the bill to immigration reform bills in 2006 and 2007. Senator Durbin attempted to attach it by amendment to the 2008 Department of Defense Authorization Bill. But the most prominent instances of the DREAM Act’s history were its original August 2001 incarnation, the 2009, 2010, and 2011 bills, and the 2017 bill.
Each of these bills lays out criteria that a person has to meet to qualify to obtain what’s called conditional resident status. With a conditional status, a beneficiary can work and live in the United States without fear of deportation as well as work toward permanent resident status. The bills also each lay out criteria a person must fulfill to move from conditional resident to permanent resident status. In broad strokes, the criteria for conditional resident status are typically that the person must have entered the US either before the age of 16 or 18 depending on the iteration of the bill, that they have proof of residence in the United States for anywhere from 4 to 5 consecutive years since the date of their arrival, graduated from a US high school or obtained a GED, and be of “good moral character.” Some versions of the bill require men to register with the selective service, and others require beneficiaries to be of a certain age when applying.
Another thing that all of these bills have in common is that, so far, none of them have passed. We’ve yet to see the 2017 bill make it to the floor, but all of the past iterations have either died before seeing a vote or simply been defeated. There was a string of rather demoralizing defeats for the bill’s supporters at the beginning of President Obama’s administration. He and the rest of the bill’s supporters continued to push it forward in 2009, 2010, and 2011. After the failure in 2011, it would seem that the Obama administration abandoned passing the DREAM Act as legislation.
In its stead, President Obama announced on June 15, 2012, that his administration would stop deporting DREAMers. 2 months later, USCIS, the United States Center for Immigration Services, began accepting applications to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which you probably know better as DACA. DACA provided protection from deportation and a work permit for qualified immigrants. Work permits were provided for 2 years, and a renewal process was made available.
The Trump administration ended DACA as we knew it on September 5, 2017, but added what it called a 6-month delay. Anyone whose work permits expired on or before March 5, 2018 could put a renewal application in. The last renewal application was accepted on October 5, 2017, with some wiggle room due to a Postal Service error that meant 4,000 applications were stuck in mail limbo for 2 weeks and arrived late. On March 6, 2018, all DACA recipients whose work permits have expired will become eligible for deportation. These are people who have grown up in the United States. For many of them, the United States is the only country they know as home. Deportation would send many DREAMers back to countries they’ve never known. Not only that, but now that we live in a world where DACA has existed, many of these people started building their future here in the United States. Those futures, and the futures of all DREAMers, are now more in question than they have been in over 5 years.
So for the next 3 episodes, I’m talking to recipients of DACA. These are young people who, for one reason or another, found themselves needing the protection DACA provided.
Let’s meet the first one.
Sandra
I’m Sandra Hernandez, and I am from Austin, TX.
I met Sandra via a fellow podcaster in a Facebook group we’re a part of. I asked Sandra how her name was pronounced, and she said it could go a variety of ways. So we’ll go with Sandra for now.
The Talk
When I was 15 years old, I started seeing flyers around the school for the public school program that allows you to get your drivers permit through school.
I went home to my mom and was like “Hey so I”m 15 and I think I should get my drivers permit. I have this flyer here. They ask for a social security number. I don’t have it.” She brushed it off and said “It’s probably in a folder we have filed away.” I didn’t think too much of it.
And that’s when they had The Talk with me. In the dreamer community community it’s a very common thing to have the talk because we get two talks in our lifetime. And I knew growing up that I was born in Mexico. That was never lost on me. Totally fine. I just never assumed that coming here was done not through the legal route.
Parents’ Story
While her parents’ path to the United States may not have been strictly by the book, it was a path born out of a desire for a better life. And actually, they never really planned to stay here.
So my parents are both from Mexico. So my dad grew up very very poor and his dad was an alcoholic. And then my mom on the other side comes from a family of engineers. So her father was an engineer. My uncles are all engineers. And so I don’t think that she was really ever for want of anything. And they got married when they were very young. So my mom was 19 when she got married. And they waited a couple of years and then they had me. I think that that’s where they really started struggling to make ends meet.
Sandra’s aunt had moved to the US with her husband, and she would tell Sandra’s parents about all of the jobs available there.
She was telling my parents “there’s a ton of jobs here for you. You can come work here for a bit, make the money you need, and then go back and start fresh in Mexico.”
My parents kind of struggled with that idea. I talked with them obviously afterwards about it, and they were like “you know what? That’s fine. Let’s go the US for a couple months and then we can come back and sort this out.”
They came here on a tourist visa. I was 3 years old at the time. So I don’t actually remember that trip at all. They did find jobs here. So my mom was a housekeep just like my aunt. And my dad went into the construction business like most do.
In the span that they were here on a tourist visa, I turned 4 years old and at that point, my mother couldn’t afford paying a nanny to take care of me. So what ended up happening was that she put me in school.
So I started school here. Pre-k. I think that’s where my memories begin. And life happened. And it was a lot of “well we’ll go back next year.” Until we decided to stay because they didn’t want to tear me away from all that I had known.
Just a Fact You Have to Live With
But Sandra didn’t grow up knowing this story. So when her parents broke the news to her at 15 that she was undocumented, it came as a shock.
I remember being very frustrated at first with them. And very upset. It was this lie they had omitted to me.
Their answer? “You don’t get one.”
I remember being super upset, and my next question was “How am I supposed to get a job?”. And they said “Well there’s always ways to get a job here. It just might not be the job that you wanted.” and I was like “Alright so what does that mean for college.” And they were like “Well you can’t go to college here.” So I was like “You’re telling me that 2 years from now, I won’t be able to go to college which is everything I have worked for.” And they were like “We don’t really know what your options are or what this means for college. But you should ask around what this means for you.”
The Counselor
At this point, Sandra says that she started to become more of an independent person. She had to figure out a lot of things about life on her own, because her parents couldn’t help her. She says she felt disappointed.
because i remember seeing all these parents come to college prep nights and parents asking around for their children. “Did you finish this recommendation?” It was always just a family thing. and I remember feeling… left out because I was doing all of that on my own.
Sandra wasn’t totally on her own, though.
AVID was like a college prep course that you took as an elective. And what I didn’t realize at the time was that it was really for underrepresented populations at the school. I was like “so why aren’t my white friends in this class? This is a great class. They teach you note taking and organization.” It wasn’t til later that I realized “They don’t need this because their parents have gone through this.”
I went to my AVID teacher. I said “Hey listen. I just found this out about myself. What are my options?” I’ll never forget coach natarti. She was an incredible teacher. She was our swim coach and our college prep advisor. She had a wealth of information and knowledge about this. She was like “Actually there are a couple of other students that are in the same position as you. let’s take a look at your situation.”
in the state of Texas, there is a law that states that if you went to school in the Texas public school system and you graduated from high school in Texas, you are allowed to qualify for in-state tuition. So, basically, when I was applying to college, I had to apply as an international student, because I was a Mexican citizen. Basically on paper it looked like I lived in Mexico. So basically, because I’d graduated from Texas, I was allowed to pay in state tuition for college. I was allowed to go because I was applying as an international student. I wasn’t saying ‘hey i’m an American citizen.’ I could pay instate even as an international student.
SO it’s a super interesting loophole. As soon as she told me the weight was lifted off my shoulders. “you’re telling me I can apply for Texas universities.” “Absolutely.” “You can apply elsewhere, but you have to pay out of state tuition.”
The Hunt for Scholarships
What my parents and I decided was ok, You apply to college in Texas, you get accepted, and you’re paying in state. You still don’t qualify for loans. How are we going to pay this? We were living paycheck to paycheck. There were no savings. It was not a luxury we were able to afford.
I’d baby sit now and again but I didn’t have a steady income.
That’s when coach natarti and I got into the weeds of how I’d pay for college. Turns out I was able to apply for state and private scholarships. What that meant was that any off hand scholarship like first-gen college student, or the scholarship for anything out there, I was applying like crazy. I was applying as long as it was a private scholarship or it was a Texas A&M scholarship because I also qualified for those.
Sandra says that that year went by in a blur of scholarship applications.
It was so much work that I hadn’t done before. It was a lot of writing, editing, interviews. I remember thinking “God I hope it’s worth it.”
One time my high school counselor…for a scholarship I was supposed to make an appearance at a luncheon and I couldn’t get there. My parents were working and I couldn’t drive. “There goes that money.” My HS counselor called me in and asked when I was leaving. And I said i wasn’t. She goes “We’re going right now” and she took me there. We sat through an hour of a mission statement and networking and at the end, they mailed me a check. That act of kindness is what encourages people to do something. I wouldn’t have just not gone and lost out on that had it not been for her.
Thankfully Texas A&M was able to grant me the regents scholarship for first-gen college students. What that looks like is they pay for your tuition for all 4 years.
Matt: Wow.
Yeah. As long as you maintain a certain gpa and follow Texas A&M guidelines.
Room & Board
I remember when I got that email, I was over the moon. I told my parents…
Sandra’s parents were excited, but the Regents Scholarship didn’t cover room & board. She thinks it might have covered a couple of books a semester maybe, but not much past tuition. She’d need to hope that some of those outside scholarships she’d applied for came through.
It was incredible. I remember applying and not hearing for a while and then just getting all of these letters. I remember tallying in a notebook how much each scholarship was for and all the criteria and seeing the number. Then I went back to the number for how much it was per year. I remember they gave me a refund and I was at a surplus. I was like “This could happen. I could do this every year.”
I remember my parents were like “Alright. You did it. You got into college. You paid for it. THat’s it. you’re set.”
So I went to Texas A&M. I thought that I wouldn’t like it, but I ended up loving it more than I ever thought I could.
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What’s Next?
So Sandra was at Texas A&M. It wasn’t her first choice of school, but after receiving a scholarship that covered all of her tuition, she went anyway and threw herself into the college experience. She made great friends, got really involved, and found a home on her campus.
freshman and sophomore year really. Freshman year I was on a high, like “Wow I made it. I’m learning so much.” Sophomore year that kind of faded. I started thinking “Great. We made it to college .That was tough. What happens after this?”
So I get a degree and then what do I do? I go to Mexico because I can’t work here? That feels patently so unfair. I remember feeling so sorry for myself. I remember thinking that it can’t be that I worked this hard just to be told “hey good job. Here’s a degree. Now go elsewhere because you can’t work here.”
DREAM Act 2010/2011
Sandra was in college during at least 2 of the recent attempts to pass the DREAM Act. It turned out to be difficult for us to nail down which of those attempts Sandra remembers, but it’s likely the 2010 or 2011 bills.
Everyone was getting very excited about the DREAM Act. My mom was getting super excited. She’d call me a lot. “If it passes you’ll be able to graduate and get a job here and stay here.” I never got my hopes up about it. Maybe I was a pessimist. In my head I was thinking of contingency plans. “What do I do when this doesn’t go through?”
You can look at it as pessimism or realism, but either way, Sandra was right. The DREAM Act did not pass in 2010 or 2011.
I think I was more upset than I thought I would be, because in my head it was never going to pass. I just remember the political climate and everyone’s thoughts on immigration and being at Texas A&M which is a more conservative school. SO, I never truly thought that it was gonna be that easy. And I never knew that I wanted it to be so easy until I heard that it was struck down.
I remember my mom called me that day and she was crying. And…she just…I feel like she felt more helpless than I did. And I didn’t understand it then. I was like “You’re not in this situation. We’ll figure it out.” Now thinking back on it, mostly what my parents feel might just be guilt for coming here and wanting to give me the best life possible and having it be so hard to make that a reality.
A Respite in DACA
During Sandra’s junior year of college, President Obama signed the executive order that would lead to the implementation of DACA.
I called my parents very excited. “He signed it. This is real.” And they were like absolutely, let’s get started on the paper work. We went through immigration lawyers. We wanted to make sure everything was done right.
Work Permit/Social Security Office/Driver’s License/Paying Taxes
So I applied for DACA and I got my work visa I think about 6 months after. I feel like I waited a good while for my work visa to come in. I remember checking the mailbox every day because I couldn’t believe this was happening.
I remember THE DAY my work permit came in. I remember it so very clearly. I opened my mailbox. I saw my work permit. I immediately got in my car and went to the social security office. I said “hey I need a SSN. Here’s my work permit. Here’s my passport. here you go.”
I sat in that office for a couple of hours. They told me my SSN would be in the mail. It was like Christmas for me. I was over the moon “I can’t believe this is happening.” I got my SSN and I got in my car and went to the DPS. I was so excited because of all of these very mundane things.
All of a sudden, all of these very normal, very boring things that the rest of us get to do had been unlocked to Sandra. And she was reveling in them.
I remember paying taxes for the first time was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I logged onto turbotax and it was like “SSN” and I was like “I got it!” I’m not as excited about it now, but back then it was the most incredible thing I was able to do. All my friends think that’s so funny. It makes me feel legitimate. It makes me feel like I’m a legitimate working, contributing member of society.
Trump Kills DACA
Sandra immediately set out to use her work permit. She worked a few part-time jobs through college, and since graduating has found a place for herself in the Austin tech scene. DACA allowed Sandra to use the degree that she’d fought to obtain in the country she grew up in.
And then, of course, you and I wouldn’t be here now if the President hadn’t ended the program that gave Sandra these freedoms.
It was on Sunday that Politico broke the new that Trump was going to end DACA on Tuesday. And thankfully my thought process was “ok so what do we do?” Because I was not about to go through that emotional turmoil again. I was like “Make a decision so I know what to do afterwards.” I was super determined on Sunday. “I’m gonna do everything it takes to fight this and call congressman.” And then Tuesday finally came around and when it was finally announced that DACA would be rescinded, my determination somehow just flew out the window.
I remember feeling like everything is over. And I’m not sure why. I had thought we were going to fight this, and as soon as it was taken away, I just crumbled.
I was feeling sorry for myself, and I just got calls from my friends and coworkers that flooded my phone. Every text said “I’m sorry. Are you OK? What can I do to help?” And I think that was the standard thought process of my friends.
I hadn’t seen that kind of support previously when I was in college. People know what DACA was and people speaking out for it and speaking out for people like me. For DREAMers.
Matt: Can you let yourself have hope for a DREAM Act 2017?
I don’t know if I have hope for a DREAM Act 2017. I have hope that people are gonna stand with me for it. And I know that that doesn’t seem like a happy ending, but it’s more than what we saw in 2012.
Sandra’s work permit expires in May of 2019, but there are many DACA recipients whose permits have expired since September 5th and there will be many that expire in the coming months.
But something will have to happen in Congress soon if those in power want to restore hope for DREAMers. This interview was recorded a few days after Trump’s announcement, and if all goes well, you’re hearing this episode near the end of January 2018. A few weeks ago, Congress left for the holidays without passing a DREAM Act. Hopefully we get to celebrate some good news in the new year.
Update
Hey this is Slightly-Closer-To-The-Present Matt from January 21st, 2018. You probably know that the US government shut down because President Trump has gone back and forth on signing a bipartisan bill that would have funded the government and included funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and a DACA replacement. Since then, CHIP was funded, the government was funded for a few more weeks, and the Democrats got a promise to put an immigration bill on the floor.
In any case, the lives of the people you’re hearing from in these episodes are still being used as bargaining chips, and their futures are still not secure.
Sign Off
Status is produced by me, Matt Horton.
And y’all, I have some news about the music. Don’t worry, our favorite Ben Michel still contributed to this episode. BUT! Music for this episode was also provided by none other than the AMAZING Breakmaster Cylinder. I’ve been wanting to shout this out to the world for literally weeks.
The Status theme song is “Bread and Circuses Are Back” by Ben Michel. Special thanks for this episode goes out to KatyKakes of KakeBytes podcast and Katy Rowley. Follow Status on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @statuspodcast And please share Status with your friends and family. Your recommendations are the best way to get the show out to more people.
And check out other Podglomerate shows! You can see The Feast, Future Break, Writers Who Don’t Write, and others at thepodglomerate.com/podcasts.
I’ll talk to you next time.
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