Status Update

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nearly 9 million people in the U.S. are part of a "mixed-status" family: some may be U.S. citizens; some may have green cards; others may face the constant specter of deportation. As the Supreme Court gets ready to decide the fate of DACA — a program that protects some undocumented people from being removed from the country — we check in with three siblings who all have different statuses, and whose fates may hinge on the outcome of this case.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that affects the lives of more than 700,000 people in the U.S.
0:08.0	That 700,000 people who were brought here as kids and are undocumented today, people like Miriam Gonzalez.
0:16.0	I mostly refer to myself as undocumented, but at the end of the day, it's like, no, I'm not a dreamer, no, I'm not undocumented, Miriam.
0:24.0	Miriam Gonzalez is one of the plaintiffs suing the Trump administration for ending DACA.
0:31.0	That's the third action for childhood arrivals. You'll remember that for certain undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as kids, DACA offers protection from deportation, it allows them to get jobs, but they have to re-up every two years.
0:44.0	So right now, Miriam has DACA.
0:48.0	Okay, so are you going to take it away? Are you going to like leave it? Like what are you going to do?
0:51.0	But her youngest sister Abigail has no documentation at all, no DACA, nothing.
0:56.0	I feel like I don't belong anywhere.
0:59.0	And Miriam's youngest brother Jose Ventura is a U.S. citizen, the only one born in the U.S.
1:05.0	There's so much pressure on me.
1:11.0	This is Code Switch from NPR. I'm Sheeran Marisol Maraji.
1:15.0	And I'm Jean Demby, ensuring you first met Miriam and her family about two years ago, not too long after the Trump administration announced that it was ending DACA.
1:22.0	That's right.
1:23.0	There have been a bunch of legal fights over the fate of DACA ever since, and this week is the Supreme Court's turn to decide whether DACA lives or dies.
1:30.0	And Miriam Gonzalez is one of the plaintiffs in that case.
1:34.0	Miriam, as you all heard, lives in a mixed status family, like nine million other people in the United States.
1:39.0	Some family members may be citizens, some may have green cards, or some other legal status like DACA.
1:43.0	And some may be facing the constant specter of deportation and being separated from their families.
1:48.0	And this is what the Gonzalez family has been dealing with for years.
1:51.0	There are four kids in the family.
1:53.0	Three of them were living at home with their parents here in LA when I first met them back in 2017.
	...

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