and immigration in general, you know, jonathan, is multicultural, right? it s from we get immigrants from all over the world. and the undocumented are no different. we do have some stats, i believe these might be from pugh poll. 92.6% recipients of daca are latino, but 3.5% are asian, pacific islander and 1.1% are black. you, your farmmily originally ce from panama. tell us your story. thank you for the invitation. i think for me personally and also us at undocublack is also immigration is a racial justice issue. blackness as well because over 565,000 black undocumented folks across the country, some have daca, some of us fall under other statuses like tps that are also under threat right now. and that s temporary
dream. thank you all for being here. i m really excited to talk to you guys because one of the things we wanted to do, and i ll start with you, jen, is to take people out of the mindset that the issue of daca is just about mexican migrants. because i think a lot of people have this stereotype that every single daca recipient came to the united states from mexico and that immigration is literally just a mexican and american problem. but it s much bigger than that. tell us your story. right. so my parents and i moved from south korea when i was 7. we came because my parents couldn t find jobs in korea and they knew the education system was more fair and just in the u.s. and i think it s really important to understand exactly what you said, immigration is a human issue. it s fundamentally about opportunity. it s about people coming to the u.s. to improve themselves and the lives that they have in the country. so i think that s something that donald trump has failed to do. that immigrati
position, the government has all the information about these young people. all of these, these daca, the government knows everything about them. right. so when you re saying fwheed to be understanding and clear about who s here, these are all young people who have not committed any crimes who are in school or in the army. so i m not sure like how much more documentation, you want to take their blood? well, also, look, i mean, by metric samples they do let me ask you this question because i want to put back up and i don t know if you can see it on your screen, back up the qualifications for daca one more time. because you said there needs to be a system. but there already is a system. there s a requirement in terms of what years you have to be born, when you have had to have come into the country, you have to have a g.e.d. or high school diploma or be a veteran. they go through and look at your criminal background. you cannot have any felonies or significant demeanor convi
and joy knows and maria knows, in this country laws don t always equal justice. and i think to the young people watching especially if you have daca, you know that your life is more than pieces of papers. and you know that your life is more than laws that people don t even understand, even the president, right? i think it s really, really important that we remind ourselves, look, the president still has not made up his mind. we don t know what he s going to say, right? correct. maria, i m so happy you brought up that point about making sure we remember the resilience of people, but if anything in many ways what defines america, which is a question i ve been asking all across this country, is our resilience. i want people to remember that is what makes you the most american is the fact is the fight for that, the fact you have to fight for it and america is not something that just lands in your lap that is given to you. joy, i have to say by the way, we re near times square, can you
done. you want biometrics? you want also blood drawn? so here s also i have a very strong point i think we need to do. we need to encourage citizenship in america. but isn t that what daca is doing? no, no, it s not. the daca by no means is encouraging citizenship. and i choose my words very carefully when i say this. and i really want to be i don t want to rip my words apart but reality is this, let s take the welfare for an example not that i m comparing the two, but for an example, we encourage in certain aspects of the system we encourage people to continue to stay on the program without any type of concrete assurance moving forward. wait, wait, wait, hold on a second. i m sorry. you brought up the welfare system as a okay. that is not related to daca. right. i already went through and said 91.5% of these young people are employed, those who are not are students or children. and one of the things that changed is once daca happened