daca has been critical in my upward path to being a law professor. i see defining american as being able to question the very terms by which me and people like me are rendered illegal. i call on immigrant communities, both those who fit the dreamer narrative and those who don t, to come together and chart a new course forward. i feel like there will be a disconnect when people hear these daca recipients because they re just americans. i met joel a few years ago here in new york. he went to this immigration event and he said, jose, like, i need people to talk more about undocumented black immigrants. and i m so happy by the way, joy, you and i when we have these conversations, right, this is not a purely latino or latina issue. exactly. thousands of undocumented, asian, black, white, thousands are under threat. we have to really realize the diversity of this entire population. i mean, you and i were talking about right now for example according to teach for america she was sayin
daca is completely constitutional, as you mentioned earlier, the legal precedent for this has been used by every administration since eisenhower, republican and democratic presidents have used this. and president trump is about to place 800,000 young immigrants like jonathan, like jin, like karla, like julieta, in harm s way. it s completely cruel and inhumane and going to call on all of us every second of society to stand up with immigrant youth and say, no, they are americans, they are part of us. we are all in this together. and one of the things and you were kind enough to do, jose antonio is you put together for us some stories of individual daca recipients who are under threat if this is rescinded. let s play joel. my name is joel sati. i am a second-year ph.d. student at the university of california berk berkeley. i came to the united states when i was 9 years old.
jose antonio vargas. and maria, and chris president of vote america now. thank you all for being here. jose, i want to start with you first because this the idea of doing this hour started with a text that you sent me. yes. where we were texting back and forth, which even though i knew impiricily, the shock of doing it so suddenly when the 800,000 people gave their information to the government, they know where to find them, when it first donned on you this could happen, what were your thoughts as somebody who is undocumented yourself? one of my thoughts was thinking to myself these 800,000 people are integrated in all of o our communities across this country, right? they re in medical schools, some of them are police officers. did you hear about that story of someone in houston who s actually a daca person who helped with the relief effort in houston right now? yeah. so i thought of all those
i was born in mexico. when i was 2 years old. my mom decided to move to the u.s. along with me and my older sister. daca has allowed me to continue to pursue my education and for my family to be able to afford to send me to college. daca has allowed me to contribute to my family s income and allowed me to travel outside my hometown without the fear of being deported. i define american as someone who values what this nation was founded on and works to improve not only themselves but the country adds a whole. another example of the real-life impact that daca has had on the lives of nearly a million dreamers and their families and what s at stake if donald trump decides to end the program. i m joined by jose antonio vargas and maria. jose, you and i talk about this a lot, one of the reasons i relate to this story is my parents came here in 1961 from the african continent, from then
stories of all those people and the fact that the stories, the real personal stories are getting lost in just a toxic politics of this. again, i think it s important to remember this, the government said to them come, give us your phone numbers, give us your addresses, give us pay us, i don t know if people know this, daca recipients have to pay about $500 to the government so that the government doesn t deport them for two years. they have to pay that again when they renew it. if you think about it 800,000 young people in this country collectively paid, what, $400 million so that the government doesn t deport them. yeah. and that s in addition to the taxes that they paid which they can t get back. exactly. so i want to put up just for our audience so you understand how you qualify for daca, because donald trump has made this sort of distinction, well, we only want to deport people who are, quote, criminals. you have to come to have u.s. before your 16th birthday, you have to b