I'm Patti Rodriguez and I'm Marik Glindo. We're the host of the podcast Out of the Shadows that tells the history of America's contentious immigration system.
I remember being undocumented and very very afraid.
The season, we're telling the incredible true story of a group of undocumented students who took on the system and change the course of history.
We're talking about the Dreamers.
The way to survive in the United States as an undepented immigrant was to be invisible, and that changed completely with the Dreamers because they said, we don't want to keep on waiting. This is our country too. We don't want to be invisible. And not only that, but we're going to be visible and we're going to pressure everyone, including the President of the United States, to change our status.
Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a resk to national security or public safety we'll be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.
In twenty twelve, then President Barack Obama issued an executive order known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that gave protected status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented people who were brought to the US as children.
But this isn't Obama's story. This is their story about how they came out of the shadows.
What we learned is that you're actually much safer the more you are out.
It's not that they weren't afraid. They were afraid. At every moment. They were afraid.
I mean they were kids.
The movement pushed Obama and his administration to create DACA because otherwise it would have just kept reporting all of us.
Listen to Out of the Shadows Dreamers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.