Dreamer Cesar Rodriguez shares his personal story as a DACA recipient
Greetings, family:
Last week, we celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals by revisiting stories and opinion columns over the last decade.
Today, we bring you new stories and essays that reflect the moment.
DACA has given 800,000-plus Dreamers — who came to the U.S. as children not knowing they were entering the nation illegally — a chance to make a contribution to what is truly their home.
Cesar Rodriguez, a Dreamer, who was able to become an engineer because of DACA, shares his personal story and warns that saving the Obama era program is not enough.
"We will not let this 10-year anniversary be co-opted into another call for our elected officials to act; instead, we take this time to celebrate our collective efforts that got us here because fighting for racial justice requires more than protecting DACA," wrote Rodriguez, who is a member of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
He is right. Activism by young people demanding a solution led to this achievement. However, the program has been in peril for years, and the future is uncertain. The courts may kill DACA, and Congress has failed to approve a solution for undocumented immigrants for decades.
In another guest essay, Louis Caldera and Elsa Núñez, co-founders of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, urge Congress to create a path to citizenship for DACA recipients.
"In the past decade, DACA has proved why expanding opportunities for Dreamers is good for all of us," they wrote. "DACA holders and other immigrant youth deserve a pathway to citizenship — not just permanent second-tier status and never-ending anxiety about their futures."
In this week's newsletter, here are other articles you will find:
The Tennessean reporter Arcelia Martin writes about Voces de Nashville, a co-op training Latinas to become Spanish language teachers.
USA TODAY reporter Rick Jervis writes about the rise of vigilante violence toward asylum seekers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Learn more about the historic presidential election in Colombia, which brings the South American nation's first leftist president and Afro-Latina vice president.
Bonus: I recommend the "Latino Rebels" podcast host Julio Ricardo Varela's June 9 interview with journalist Juan González, author of "Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America." They talked about the recent Summit of the Americas and the future of Puerto Rico, among other topics. A second revision of the book came out on June 14.
Share your cuento: Be a Latino storyteller
The Tennessean is partnering with Plaza Mariachi to put on Latino Tennessee Storytellers program on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. Nominate yourself or someone else to volunteer to share a 10- to 12-minute story that evening. Email me your name, contact information and story idea to dplazas@tennessean.com.
Happy week! ¡Muchas gracias!
David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee. He is of Colombian and Cuban descent, has studied or worked in several Spanish-speaking countries, and was the founding editor of Gaceta Tropical in Southwest Florida. He has lived in Tennessee since 2014. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or tweet to him at @davidplazas.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Cesar Rodriguez shares his personal story as a DACA recipient
