politics | Q&A
2020
A generation of undocumented immigrants receives a moment of safety following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dreamers. A DACA recipient reflects on what’s next in an exclusive Q&A and poem.
Reprieve
A Brief
By EVANGELINE BRENNAN
T
he Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that grants undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children temporary protection from deportation. Despite attempts to walk back the program from the Trump administration, on Thursday, June 18, the Supreme Court found in a 5–4 ruling that the current administration had not sufficiently justified ending the program. While this decision can be repealed at any time with sufficient causation, for now, the Supreme Court has changed the lives of DACA recipients across the country. This news was met with great adulation from DACA participants and allies alike across the country as, for the first time since the Trumpera began, a generation of immigrants has been offered a small reprieve from persecution. Following a tumultuous time in legislative limbo, in which the Supreme Court considered the Trump administration’s petition to rescind the protections DACA offers early childhood arrivals, Tania Y. Solano Cervantes, a student at Saddleback College at the time, wrote a poem regarding the possibility that DACA would be repealed and how it would affect not only her—a childhood ar34
Orange Appeal | 2022
rival herself—but also her loved ones and future generations of immigrants. I had the privilege of sitting down with Tania Y. Solano Cervantes to ask for her thoughts on DACA and her experience as an immigrant who has had to live in fear of not only being undocumented but also of the formation of stricter immigration policies from the current administration. When did you come to America and where did you immigrate from? I was born in Guerro, Mexico and I immigrated to the U.S. when I was only two months old. Do you consider yourself an American? Have you/would you be comfortable living anywhere else? I often find myself struggling to answer this question. On the one hand, I was raised knowing of my undocumented status; I was well aware that I was not a U.S. citizen and because of it, I felt un-“American.” On the other hand, although I am proud to be Mexican—I am very proud of where I come from and I honor my heritage—I can never call Mexico my home. As I mentioned earlier, I immigrated to the U.S. when I was 2 months old. I was brought to California by my parents as an
infant. Therefore, my life here in the U.S. is all I really know. It’s the only place I can call home, but this government often fails to recognize that. Immigration policies have never considered me as an “American,” it wants to rid me of this country by deporting me, and I grew up internalizing that. And for a long time, I did not feel comfortable living in Mexico or the U.S. because I felt like I did not belong anywhere. This is why advocacy for undocumented rights in America is so important to me because I know there are between 690,000800,000 DACA people who have struggled and continue to struggle with their nationality. Some of us have not stepped foot in our respective birth countries since we immigrated to the U.S. Few of us have forgotten or don’t speak our native tongues anymore. And most of us have lived the majority of our lives in the U.S. We (DACA people) don’t consider any other place “home” other than the U.S. So, no. I do not feel comfortable living anywhere else. Ultimately, in every way, shape, and form, DACA people are American. And it is time that we all acknowledge that; I am starting to, and this is why I will not stop until this country does, too.
