Should DACA be Repealed?

DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that protects immigrants from getting deported back to a country they barely lived in. These immigrants were brought to America as children by their parents before 2007. The program protects mostly the minors under the age of 16 who have lived in America most of their life, which is protecting approximately 800,000 immigrants, from getting deported and should be kept here for their own safety.

Thanks to President Barack Obama who established this policy in 2012, many immigrants were saved from deportation. Now, President Donald Trump has announced he is ending DACA and is basically sending all the immigrants who are protected under this program back to their country, which most of them have never been to. Trump said Obama’s program was unconstitutional and needs to be approved by Congress.

This reminds me of something. In 1816, many white Americans believed that black slaves were a threat to their American culture and wanted them gone from their country. By 1824, 13,000 slaves were sent to West Africa to a place called Liberia. The problem was that those slaves were born and raised in America their entire life so they didn’t know how to speak any languages in Africa besides English. Of course, the struggle began when they needed to learn and adapt to their new environment.

If the DACA program gets shut down, it will be like sending slaves to Liberia all over again. This time it will be worse, sending 800,000 immigrants to a country they never lived in as teenagers or young adults. President Trump may want to get rid of the immigrants here in America, but getting rid of the DACA program will most likely cause more chaos as other countries are forced to take their ‘people’ back. In a way, this deal needs to involve other countries on whether they should agree to take these people into their country. It will also hurt each immigrant individually trying to adjust their new environment and hurt the people around them who grew up with them. So it’s best to keep this program to avoid those problems and for the people who have lived in this country their entire lives just like American citizens.