I remember like 15 years ago or so, I was invited to be the MC for a fundraiser.

It was for college students who had come to the United States as children but had no legal status.

They called themselves dreamers.

There was a lot of optimism the night of the fundraiser that the federal government would

give those students a pathway to citizenship eventually because how couldn't they? Those students might have been born in another country,

but they were culturally American and were doing what young people in the U.S. were supposed to do,

go to college, have careers, all of that.

That's all we want to be, just contributing members of this country because this is the

only place we call home.

But the years went on.

Nothing happened until 2012 when the Obama administration created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

It's more commonly known as DACA.

I am confident in my ability to implement this program over the next two years, and I'm confident that the next president and the next Congress and the American people will ultimately recognize why this is the right thing to do.

DACA allowed more than 800,000 people who came to this country as children but had no legal status to basically live life without the fear of deportation.

It was absolutely life-changing, but it was also limiting, too.

That's Dahita Wabzada. She was a DACA beneficiary, but also in many ways a prisoner of it.

People like her had to renew it every two years and wait as no path to citizenship has ever come.

I basically lived like my entire 20s in complete instability living in two-year increments.

And I realized I can't live life like this anymore.

I can't live life comfortably. I. I can't live life comfortably.

I've always been in a state of anxiety.

And that's when I pretty much gave myself a promise that if I'm turning 30 and I'm still a DACA recipient, I'm leaving the U.S.

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