PEP Fellow Jeremy Carballo-Pineda (PPS ’22) published an op-ed in Indy Week that emphasizes the importance of upholding Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, for the “sake of the nation’s economic growth”. DACA is a policy enacted in 2012 by President Barak Obama that protects about 800,000 young people, known as “DREAMers,” from deportation due to unlawful entrance to the United States as children. In July of 2021, a federal judge in Texas halted new applications for the DACA program from being approved by ruling the program “unlawful.”
In his op-ed, Jeremy affirms the far-reaching implications this ruling has: “thousands of families will lose hope and be used as political pawns, their lives and communities forever changed.” When the time comes for the Supreme Court to rule on the future of DACA, Jeremy states that the program should be reinstated for its economic prosperity. Upholding DACA would halt unnecessary competition over low-skilled jobs and protect the overall wages of U.S. citizens, allow the added legal jobs to create a positive net effective on the economy, and most importantly, prevent DACA-eligible immigrants who are denied the opportunity to work from being systematically kept poor.
You can read Jeremy Carballo-Pineda’s full op-ed here: https://indyweek.com/news/Letters-to-the-Editor/op-ed-supreme-court-should-uphold-daca/