DREAM Act Portal Forum - DACA Immigrants From Europe And Canada Say They're Ready To Join The Fight

http://wlrn.org/post/daca-immigrants...ady-join-fight

DACA Immigrants From Europe And Canada Say They're Ready To Join The Fight
By KENYA DOWNS • APR 5, 2018

Growing up in Michigan as an undocumented immigrant, Nejvi Bejko says few people outside of her inner circle knew about her status. She thinks that being white had a lot to do with it.

“No one’s really looking at me and thinking, ‘She should be deported,’ or all these hateful words that don’t necessarily apply to me because of what I look like,” says Bejko, who came to Sterling Heights, Michigan, from Albania at 9 years old with her parents and younger brother.

She says her family didn’t hide her immigration status, but they hardly talked about it. In middle school, she began to realize that her life in the US was different from her peers’.

“You hide why you can’t drive or move away for college,” she says. “So, you become this antisocial person essentially because you have to.”

As an undocumented immigrant, Bejko couldn’t afford many of Michigan’s top schools; her undocumented status meant she wasn’t eligible for in-state tuition. Her only option was to stay in her small town and earn an associate's degree at a local community college. She eventually got an apprenticeship with a clothing company in Washington, DC.

Then in 2012, President Barack Obama used an executive action to create DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which temporarily protected some undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation. It allowed Bejko to obtain a driver’s license and a work permit. So she left her apprenticeship and went to Michigan State University — since 2013, the school has allow residents who went a Michigan high school to pay in-state tuition regardless of immigration status — to pursue a bachelor’s degree in apparel and textile design.

When President Donald Trump announced last September that his administration is ending DACA, Bejko decided to join the fight for immigration reform. She connected with an immigrant advocacy group and started talking with lawmakers and the media about her immigration status.

“I understand what everyone is going through. So while it was easier for me to go unnoticed and blend in, there’s too much at stake now,” says Bejko, whose DACA work permit expires in October. In February, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision to block the Trump administration from ending DACA while a lawsuit moves forward. This means Bejko will be able to renew her status for now, but things could change again depending on the outcome of the lawsuit and whether Congress takes any action.

Just before the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, April 2, Trump posted on Twitter that “DACA is dead,” and blamed Democrats for inaction. He inaccurately proclaimed that “everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon.” In fact, DACA has many restrictions, including requirements that recipients have been in the US continuously since 2007 and arrived before age 16.

Bejko says, as limited as the program is, DACA gave her the confidence to talk about her undocumented status publicly and to share her experiences with lawmakers. The Pew Research Center estimates that 5,200 DACA recipients are from Europe, making them an often overlooked group, considering that the majority of immigrants with DACA come from Mexico.