DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is an initiative inaugurated under President Obama’s tenure. DACA provides protection to young immigrants against deportation, who were brought to the country at an age of less than 16 years, in addition to a two year work permit. Though these permits have the characteristic of being renewed, they cannot, by any means, help the immigrants gain citizenship.
However, the Trump administration has now announced that it will not accept any new DACA applicants and the old ones will be phased out, after September this year. While the issue remains under discussion, a local judge has suggested the DACA recipients to get their DACA renewed while there is still time and the decision is not implemented. The lawmakers are devising policies to help the DACA recipients stay in the country and avoid deportation when the decision is implemented and the DACA is not accepted anymore. 242339 students in California are undocumented and have DACA status and the nationwide number of such students in 80,000. Although the DACA students do not receive student loans or state funds for education but they are charged the discounted tuition fees at public colleges and universities.
There is extensive help provided to students having threw DACA status. The California Dream Act allows aid to be provided to students, regardless of the fact whether they have a DACA status or not. The students who are entitled to the DACA are subjected to admission in a California High School and continue attending it for a minimum of three years.
A serious concern rising amongst the DACA recipients is that some of the students are enrolled in colleges based on work and study policy. The students work jobs in order to be funded by their college but if their work permits are cancelled and not renewed, the probability of such students losing their become 100%. This means that not only wholly those students lose their job they might have to drop out of college to.
Another major concern for the DACA students and their families is that, in order to get the DACA status, they provided particular information about themselves regarding their immigration and other personal details. The students and their families are worried that the information, which is with the government, maybe misused against the, and lead to deportation, given the current government’s strict stance on it.