Law,
Order, and the Dreamers
By
Put yourself in the shoes of a typical “Dreamer” — one of the
hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth brought here as small children.
When you were six years old, your mother illegally crossed the
Mexican border and carried you into the United States. Although you’ve been
here ever since, some people say you must be deported because you’re “illegal.”
True, they might admit, you had no choice about entering
unlawfully. Your parents made that decision for you when you were a small
child.
But now you’re grown up, they say. You became an adult when you
turned 18, so you should have obeyed the law at that point and gone back to
Mexico. Instead, you chose to break the law by remaining in America. You’re not
entitled to amnesty.
Some people actually argue this. But can anyone honestly say
that’s the decision they would make if they were a Dreamer?
If you’re a typical recipient of DACA status — that is, Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals — you’ve never left the United States since you
arrived, you speak perfect English, and the only schools you’ve gone to are
American schools. You have few or no memories of Mexico (or wherever your
parents came from), and the only life you know is an American life.
You graduated from an American high school and are now working
an American job or studying at an American college. You’ve never been in
trouble with the law. You work hard and pay taxes.
Like most Americans, you hope and strive for a better life for yourself and your children. (One in four Dreamers have children who are U.S. citizens.) This certainly describes the young people I’ve helped, as a lawyer, to win DACA protection.
If you were in this situation, would you choose to leave your
family, friends, community, and the life you’d led for 12 years — merely
because you were said to be “illegal”? Of course not.
In the first place, it’s not so clear that the law requires
kicking these people out. The Trump administration is trying to end the DACA
program, which protected Dreamers from deportation, but a federal district
judge recently suspended those efforts.
But in any event, twelve years of living in our country created
legitimate expectations that cannot fairly be ignored.
The claim that we have no choice because “the law is the law” is a monstrous falsehood. There is always discretion to temper law with justice, mercy, and common sense.
The claim that we have no choice because “the law is the law” is a monstrous falsehood. There is always discretion to temper law with justice, mercy, and common sense.
The demand that we expel 800,000 young people who are in this
situation is a demand that we enshrine cruelty as national policy.
Each of these Dreamers is a unique human being with needs, hopes, fears, and dreams — and each must be treated with dignity and respect, as an individual, not as a pawn in a political war.
Each of these Dreamers is a unique human being with needs, hopes, fears, and dreams — and each must be treated with dignity and respect, as an individual, not as a pawn in a political war.
Justice must prevail, not callous rigidity. Save the Dreamers!
Mitchell Zimmerman
is an attorney who has represented a number of DACA applicants.
Distributed by OtherWords.org.