It’s literally so easy to contact your congressmen via text about DACA
You might have heard that while the rest of us were bidding farewell to summertime and our liver health this weekend, this asshole named Donald Trump was mulling over whether he should deport hundreds of thousands immigrants who are protected by DACA, or the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Here’s the good news: you can contact your congressman about it without even having to google his or her name, you lazy b!
But first, the back story: DACA was enacted by President Barack Obama (miss u bb) and designed to protected undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children. It started in 2012 and anyone brought to the U.S. before age 16 since 2007 has been eligible to apply. It basically ensures that kids who are brought here by their parents can get driver’s licenses, enroll in school, and work legally, even if they’re undocumented. CNN has a helpful explainer here.
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And now, after going out of his way to build DACA-related suspense all holiday weekend like the histrionic monster he is, Trump has announced that he’s reversing the order that created DACA. So DACA is basically dead, and no one knows what’s going to happen to the people it protects.
The DACA participants, or Dreamers, are safe for the next six months, but it doesn’t look good.Now that Trump has reversed Obama’s DACA order, congress has to decide whether to pass laws that protect the Dreamers from being deported. Congress has six months to determine what’ll happen to the 800,000 people who are currently protected by DACA. It’s likely Trump and the GOP will use them as a bargaining chip to get stricter immigration measures passed all around. If anything, congressional Republicans will only reinstate DACA or allow Dreamers to stay in the country if there are also stricter immigration measures passed at the same time.
Clearly, this is about to be an ongoing battle. So this is where you texting your legislators comes in.
If you want to make sure Dreamers aren’t deported because of Trump, you need to contact your congressional representatives stat.
And luckily, a company called Resistbot has made it so freaking easy to do that. All you have to do is text Resist to 50409. From there, Resistbot will ask you for your address and then tell you who your representatives are. After that, you just text “fax” and Resistbot asks you what you want to say to them.
And yes, it goes through as a fax, so your reps won’t even realize you’re a good-for-nothing millennial. They’ll think you’re like 50 and actually listen to you!
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From there, just follow the prompts until Resistbot asks you for your message. You can say as much or as little as you want. Just try to keep it clean because copy and pasting “Fuck Donald Trump” 50 times might be cathartic, but it won’t get us too far.
Instead, you could say something like this:
“Please do everything in your power to ensure that the 800,000 people currently protected by DACA are not deported. It would be un-American, cruel and unnecessary to send these people away from the U.S. simply because they were born elsewhere and are undocumented. DACA already has provisions for removing violent or unlawful people from its protection, which only happens about .2% of the time. The vast majority of people protected by DACA do not pose a threat to our district or our community. I hope you will help them not only to stay in the U.S., but to continue down a path to citizenship if that is what they desire.”
Whew, I think I feel a single tear rolling down my cheek! Speaking of tears, you could also take some inspo from Obama’s statement on DACA.
So get to texting. It is literally the absolute least you could do. Young people who’ve lived here almost their entire lives might have to leave everything behind just to appease a bunch of gout-ridden old white guys who can’t get it up and will be dead in 20 years or less anyway. #Resist!