Bishop David Zubik urges support for DACA

Bishop David Zubik urges support for DACA

As a leader in Southwestern Pennsylvania, I ask everyone to urge the President to continue Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), a vital program for older teens and young adults who were brought to this country without documents when they were children.

These young people are known as the “dreamers” because they believe in the American dream. They have grown up here. They share our language, they share our values and they share their gifts and talents with us, their neighbors.

In 2012, DACA was enacted to make sure that the dreamers could seek higher education, get a good job, a driver’s license and pass a background check without fear of deportation. DACA is for young people with no criminal history, who are students or who have graduated high school or its equivalent or who are veterans of the U.S. military.  Over the past five years about 800,000 young people have benefitted and continue to benefit from this program. If it is discontinued, they stand to lose their work permits and face deportation to a country where they have no home.

When Jesus was a child, his parents fled with him across the border to another country to save his life. Today our nation is home to many young people whose parents carried them across the border as children, often to save them from violence or the kind of grinding poverty that leads to sickness and death. They did not make the choice to cross the border without documents, others made it for them.

Now DACA is in peril. Jesus has told us that we will be judged on how we care for the least and the vulnerable, because it is how we care for him (Matt. 25:31-46)

Please immediately contact President Trump, U.S. Senators Pat Toomey and Bob Casey, as well as your congressional representative, and ask them to insist that DACA remains the policy of our nation. Their contact information is here: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials. Do it now, because President Trump has said he will announce his decision on Tuesday. Do it for the dreamers. Do it for Jesus.

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