美国国家公共电台 NPR Deadline Looms For Thousands Of DREAMers

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

So this is a very important deadline today for DACA recipients 1. That's the Deferred 2 Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects nearly 700,000 so-called DREAMers from deportation 3. Today is the last day for DACA recipients to renew their two-year work permits before the program expires. Here's NPR's Joel Rose.

JOEL ROSE, BYLINE 4: Since the Trump 5 administration announced a month ago that it's phasing out DACA, thousands of undocumented immigrants have been scrambling 6 to renew their two-year work permits for what could be the last time. Many got help filling out their applications at pop-up legal clinics like this one at the City University of New York.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: When was your last entry to the United States?

ROSE: DACA helped thousands of students across the country go to college and to work legally after graduation. Now, all that is in limbo 7. Ashraf Jalal (ph) moved to New York when he was 4 with his parents who are Moroccan. Jalal is studying computer science at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, but he knows that without DACA he might have to leave the U.S. to work in his field.

ASHRAF JALAL: I mean, I can definitely work back in Morocco with an American degree in computer science, but I've never been there. I don't know anything. I don't know any of my family, actually.

ROSE: The Department of Homeland Security says more than 100,000 DACA recipients have applied 8 to renew their work permits ahead of today's deadline. DACA protections will begin expiring in March unless Congress reaches an agreement to extend them. There's bipartisan support for that idea, but there are some sticking points. One is that immigration hard-liners say any deal has to include some funding for President Trump's border wall. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley thinks there is room for compromise on that.

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CHUCK GRASSLEY: Any potential DACA agreement has to include robust 9 border security, and by that, I don't mean a wall. Border security is more than that.

ROSE: But that's not the only hurdle 10. Immigrant rights advocates and some Democrats 11 want to see new protections for DREAMers without extra border spending or other conditions attached. While all of this plays out in Washington, Jennifer Guzman (ph) is just trying to get through school. She's a junior at Hunter College in New York.

JENNIFER GUZMAN: My main goal is graduating on time because an education is something no one can take for me. I don't know what comes after that.

ROSE: What Guzman does know is that her DACA benefits will expire in the summer of 2019, just a few weeks after she's scheduled to graduate. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York.

(SOUNDBITE OF GABRIEL GARZON-MONTANO'S "THE GAME - INSTRUMENTAL")