Anibal Jimenez considers himself an American.
He plays basketball, loves Kobe Bryant, plays video games, eats pizza and burgers, and enjoys Hollywood.
“That’s pretty much all I know: America,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez came to the United States just before he turned 7 years old and has returned to his hometown of Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico only a few times since. He attended Mt. San Antonio College as an undergraduate student and is currently enrolled in the graduate college counseling and student development program at Azusa Pacific.
But during his undergraduate years, Jimenez had difficulty figuring out whether his degree was worth anything.
“My mom told me that when I graduate, it’s going to be hard for me to get a job,” Jimenez said. “I kept on telling myself, what’s the point of getting a degree if I can just work in construction like all my other cousins and make more money?”
This was before he became a member of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that was established during the Obama-era in 2012, which granted undocumented youth temporary protection from deportation without a pathway to legal status.
The history of DACA
The first version of the DACA program, also known as the Dream Act, was introduced to Congress in 2001. Although the legislation did not pass, young undocumented immigrants have been referred to as Dreamers ever since.
When former President Barack Obama established DACA in 2012, things began to change. The program gave young immigrants such as Jimenez hope. But the promise of the American dream did not come without strings attached.
“[Many] of us actually don’t like the process of DACA,” Jimenez said. “They keep giving us promises. Are they going to make us citizens? Or are they going to take it away?”
E. J. Smith [not their real name], a graduate student at the University of Southern California and DACA program member who requested to remain anonymous, described the process as “mental torture,” which can lead to depression for many.
Recipients need to renew their application every two years, and each renewal requires a $495 application fee — something that is difficult for immigrants from low socio-economic backgrounds to afford. Many that are eligible for the program don’t apply because they cannot afford the application fee. Others fear that by revealing their identity to the government, they would be more likely to get deported if the program was ever repealed.
But, DACA or not, Jimenez said that every undocumented immigrant currently has that fear lingering in the back of their head. This fear has become more rational during the Trump-era due to the anti-immigrant rhetoric that President Donald Trump has normalized.
A drain to the system
When the Trump administration announced in 2017 that it would put an end to DACA, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions argued that the program had “denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.”
While conservatives praised Trump’s move, there has been no evidence to prove that immigration — legal or illegal — pushes out native-born workers in a systematic way. Economic researchers have even concluded that repealing the program was “particularly wrongheaded as economic policy,” according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
In 2018, foreign-born persons compromised 17.4 percent of the total U.S. labor force, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“A lot of people say that we just come here and we don’t contribute to the economy, but we actually do,” Jimenez said. “We all pay taxes. Whenever we go to the store and pay for something, we’re also paying a tax on that.”
Immigrants contribute $329 billion in tax revenue to state, local and federal taxes annually, adding $2 trillion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2016.
DACA is currently frozen in time, as the Supreme Court decides whether or not Trump had the constitutional power to terminate the program. Thus, DACA recipients like Smith and Jimenez who are still enrolled in college are stuck in a limbo where they are unsure about whether or not they will be able to complete their degrees in time.
However, the negative rhetoric and perception of the way people regard undocumented immigrants has lingered.
“It’s a pride thing.”
Most DACA recipients prefer not to publicly reveal their status. Smith attributed this to the possibility that the government will use the paper trail of documents that applicants create to later on track down recipients “and then start with the deportation process.”
“For some of us, we don’t like the attention,” Jimenez explained. “Sometimes, it’s a pride thing. When people find out that we’re DACA, for some reason they want to help us out and contribute as much as they can and I know that it comes from a good place for people, but I think for some people it’s pride because they think, ‘we’re doing good by ourselves.’”
For Jimenez, it’s because he does not fear getting deported. If he does, he said he will start his life wherever he gets deported to. He admits that staying in the U.S. would benefit him more due to its strong economy, but he wouldn’t be left jobless since a university degree is considered very prestigious in Mexico.
Looking to the future
Many immigrants such as Jimenez and Smith have had to think about their career paths from a young age to ensure they were still viable in case of a ‘what-if’ scenario.
For Smith, that was filmmaking, as it is a profession that he could still pursue if he had to return to Mexico. For the time being, Smith hopes to apply his expertise in script-writing to draw the bridge between what he sees as a disconnect between the realm of television shows that skim the surface of the immigrant experience and the public.
“They keep trying to write for Latinos,” Smith said. “But it’s not their story. It’s all people that can’t relate. They’re just writers.”
Smith’s mission is to write and develop stories that are specifically related to the Latino and immigrant experience from the point of view of somebody in their position.
Whatever the Supreme Court decides, Smith hopes he can still make his dream work.