According to the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, in 2016 California’s Kern County had an estimated 15,000 people eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.  DACA allows some of those who were brought to the United States as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S., but unlike the proposed DREAM Act, DACA does not provide a path to citizenship. For many of these individuals, life in the United States is the only life they have known, and the threat of being deported back to a country where they might face poverty or persecution and that has become in many ways “foreign” is a constant cause of anxiety and depression.  Too often, their stories go unheard.  Issue 4.5 hopes to give a platform to some of these Kern County voices, and in the interest of keeping them out of the cross-hairs of ICE, each has chosen to remain anonymous.

Contents

“Opportunity”