Name: Wyatt Wolfman
Social Justice Group: DACA and Immigration
Date of Fieldwork: December 1, 2017
Name of Organization: N/A
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: DACA Recipient
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
My group and I had the rare opportunity of interviewing a DACA recipient. DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. As long as you are 14 and younger and have no criminal record, you are eligible for DACA. If you are selected, you are no longer an illegal immigrant, as you now have a Temporary Protected Status.This is hard because most DACA recipients avoid getting interviews because of the recent rescinding of DACA. They don’t want to get exposed to the government as once the government has their name, they have their address and can show up at the immigrant’s door as soon as January 1st, 2019 and deport them back to their country they lived in before they crossed the border. For that reason, this DACA recipient chose to remain anonymous.
What I learned:
We learned so much in this interview. The interviewee told us the whole story, starting with how and when they crossed the Mexican American border. They met with a few other families at a spot in the middle of nowhere to be picked up in a van to be transported near the border. Once they were much closer to the border, they still had a week-long walk in order to evade border patrol. At just four years old, it was s disastrous blow when they were caught and driven back t around the place they started. Never giving up, their mom persisted and the embarked on the journey again. This time, they were successful. Once they crossed the border near Mexico City, they were taken by bus across the country, eventually ending up in New York City.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Though the fieldwork I learned that although DACA is the best thing there was for immigrants, it only convers a small portion of the immigrant community. Not everybody was eligible for DACA, so people who were just as hard workers as some DACA recipients (for example the interviewee’s mother), they were still unable to succeed in America because they were unable to obtain DACA status. This is not only unfair to those unable to obtain DACA status, but it creates a large divide in the immigrant community. The whole idea of DACA is that the “good” immigrants can have these privileges, but the “bad” immigrants cannot. In reality, those labels are untrue as can be. “Bad” immigrants are just as good as the “good” immigrants but are unable to have the same privileges. Those labeled as “bad” immigrants are rightfully upset and often take it out on the DACA recipients. The person we interviewed see’s this commonly in the immigrant community and also felt guilty after they obtained their status because they were just as “good” as those other immigrants who were unable to obtain DACA status even though they deserved it equally.
