Published 18:51 IST, June 12th 2020
Immigrant in the US anxiously awaits Supreme Court decision
Alejandra Gonzalez is the youth organizing director for the immigrant rights group Voces at De La Frontera and she's enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
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Alejandra Gonzalez is the youth organizing director for the immigrant rights group Voces at De La Frontera and she's enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. She just graduated from college and wanted to help immigrants, because she knew how helpless she felt in high school knowing graduating meant learning to navigate life without papers.
"I don't want children our country to go through that," she said. "I don't. I want to be able to give them the resources and the platform to feel like they do have power because they do."
She's been shielded from deportation and allowed to legally work in the U.S. under the Obama-era program. Her parents brought her to the U.S. at the age of 5 from Mexico.
She is now anxiously awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court to release a decision on President Donald Trump's attempt to end the protections. The high court heard arguments last fall and typically releases rulings on Mondays in the spring. But it's unclear exactly when an answer will come because the court sometimes issues decisions on other days as work wraps up for the summer.
She says she's afraid of being deported in front of her boyfriend's kids. She says she won't be able to legally own her car anymore, even though she just paid it off.
"I worked really hard to earn my degree and … not that it would lose its value, but it would lose its purpose, right? That's the whole purpose of having a degree, is to gain a job. And I wouldn't be able to do that."
She's not optimistic on their decision.
"I know that people are going to keep fighting and I know that you won't be able to like, you won't be able to shut our light out," she said. "… Maybe we'll just really start taking bigger actions for that change that we want to see."
(Image credit: Representative)
18:51 IST, June 12th 2020