To The DREAMers: Godspeed

Victor Landa, NewsTaco

This is a really big deal, this first day of application for deferment under President Obama’s immigration directive. It’s been two months coming and that time has been filled with speculation and uncertainty. And truth be told, not much has changed.

In the weeks since June 15, the day President Obama signed the deferment directive, the deferment has been mostly politicized, with accusations of pandering on one side and racism on the other. But tomorrow is when the reality of the matter begins to unfold; when the estimated 800,000 undocumented persons who qualify for deferment will begin to step forward. Let’s not underestimate the enormity of that step.

Yes, it’s a great opportunity, it’s what many of them and their supporters have been advocating for, but it’s also fraught with uncertainty. The guidelines were not known until ten days ago; the Department of Homeland Security assures us that it’s ready;  no one knows for certain – except government authorities – how the information given by the undocumented will be used or processed. It’s a risk. But then, what great reward doesn’t come without a risk?

And consider this, these undocumented persons, these DREAMers, have lived among us, as Americans, for years without us knowing the truth of their identity. Their status was, for all purposes, a mere technicality – but an important legal one. So this is at once a disclosure, an uncertainty, a hope, a revelation, and a step toward freedom (albeit temporary). There is no promise at the other end. Except their own hope.

So yes, it’s a big deal.

It means education with a purpose. It means a future with an American ideal (which in the end is a human ideal with an American tag attached to it).

And it’s also boatloads of bureaucracy. You can imagine the standing in line, and the filling of documents, the sitting for interviews – and the waiting. It’s a government process after all. And that’s the part that must make the DREAMers the most weary. At least it would seem that way. These are American people – except for a tiny technicality – who have the same basic mistrust and cynicism toward government and bureaucracy that most all other Americans have. And to top it off they have to gather enough trust in the government to step forward and reveal themselves.

Think of this as making things right, setting things straight. It’ll be a process, hopefully easy, hopefully short, and at the other end things will be as they always have, only with a dose of hope where before there was none. Here at NewsTaco we’ll be reporting on it as best as we know how.

It is a bid deal, so Godspeed to them.