For Immediate Release:
July 20, 2021
Contact:
Gabriella Barbosa
gbarbosa@childrenspartnership.org
(213) 341-0271
The Children’s Partnership is outraged by last Friday’s ruling by a federal judge in Texas that puts a partial end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, halting the processing of new DACA applications immediately. Importantly, communities should note that renewal applications will continue to move forward and people who currently have DACA will keep their protections.
However, this decision underscores the danger of continued and surging anti-immigrant actions and attacks. The decision is flawed and cruel and will detrimentally impact the health and well-being of hundreds of thousands of California’s children and the adults they rely on.
California is home to more immigrants than any state in the nation, and nearly 200,000 Californians benefit from DACA – roughly a third of program participants nationwide. DACA recipients are youth leaders; parents who provide for the stability, health and well-being of their children; teachers who educate our future generation; health care professionals who deliver our babies and tend to our sick; and so much more.
Our state is also home to nearly 4 million children who live with at least one immigrant parent – roughly half of all our state’s children. With nearly one in four DACA recipients being parents, the security of the DACA program has enabled children to directly benefit from having parents with higher levels of education and better-quality jobs, which benefits children’s health, academic achievement, and employment in the long run.
We are grateful to the Biden-Harris Administration for their stated intention to continue to protect DACA and to appeal this decision. DACA has always been a temporary solution, leaving DACA recipients and DACA-eligible individuals vulnerable to attack. We must support comprehensive federal immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship in order to keep families together. We urge Congress to act boldly and protect immigrant families and their children and provide them with long overdue relief by providing a path to citizenship through budget reconciliation.
Join us and our partners in collective action to protect our immigrant families:
- Tell Congress we need a pathway for citizenship (National Immigrant Law Center)
- Learn more and share about what this means for community members (Immigrant Legal Resource Center)
- Help spread the word with this social media toolkit (United We Dream)
