President Trump Ends DACA, and Yes It Affects People Right Here in Lubbock

It is rare that I will openly discuss anything that could be of a political nature. But this one affects a number of people I know. And because it hurts them, it hurts me.

The end of DACA.

President Trump decided to end the Obama era program today and gave Congress 6 months to do something. (More than likely they won’t be able to come up with much of anything.) This is typical politics, the President doesn’t want to come across as the total bad guy and by passing the buck onto Congress, his goal is to make them look bad. In the end, they both look really bad.

I believe that anyone who wants to come into this country should go through the proper legal channels, it is the law and if you start off on the right side of it, then things tend to go better as a rule.

But what about the roughly 800,000 undocumented folks that came in as kids? They didn’t have a say on whether they came to this country or not. They did what their parents told them to do. Sins of the Father.

In a lot of cases, the US is the only home these kids have ever known.

If you want to punish and deport the parents, then do what you must, but let the kids stay. Make them go through the normal channels and work with and for them so they can either get resident alien status or citizenship.

One of my friends, Uriel Granados who lives in Lubbock, had this to say about his experience:

"It's tough and very stressful everything that's happening. When I came here my parents convinced me that this was the best thing for me. That I would have a chance to follow my dreams.

As I grew up I started realized how hard it was to be here without documentation. It wasn't until Obama passed DACA that I felt like I was part of this country.

I have fought for my rights as human so much from being able to marry the person I love to gaining the right to have a job. Knowing that I'm sitting on a time bomb is so hard.

I don't want to go back to Mexico.

It's a beautiful country (Mexico) but I just don't know it anymore. And as an openly gay man, it's even tougher. They are not as open as the US. All I can say that even with this heart ache I have to stay positive and continue to fight. My days might be numbered in the US but while I can, I will try to help others."

Being someone who used to work in Tejano radio, I dealt with families with kids that were brought here illegally. It was and is a fact of life. But to those kids this is home. They go to school, they learn, they become a productive part of our society. The sins of the father seem to be a deciding factor in these kids lives and it isn't fair. What did these kids do to deserve this? They were not old enough to make decisions for themselves and now we are going to just start sending them back? Something isn't right with that. It keeps going back to sins of the father.

And now our leaders in Washington want to take all of that away and send all of the innocent children back to wherever they came from. And to top it off those same leaders expect these Dreamers to be able to survive in a place that is, in fact, foreign to them?

Congress needs to act on this, they need to do the right thing and help these kids out, they don’t deserve to be harmed because of the actions of their parents.

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