The following letter to the campus community was written by Dr. Donald B. Taylor, President of Cabrini University, in response to the current White House decision regarding the DACA program and the resulting uncertainty regarding the future of these young people.
Dear Cabrini University community,
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows individuals who entered the U.S. prior to their 16th birthday to register to remain in the country and to be eligible for work permits. As you may have heard, President Donald Trump has decided to end the DACA program, and has placed the future of DACA recipients in the hands of Congress.
Cabrini University believes that DACA should be renewed to protect the nearly 800,000 DACA recipients who would be at risk of deportation without DACA protection. Having been raised and educated here, most DACA recipients consider America their home, and uprooting these young people would cause them irreparable harm.
Be assured, Cabrini University will do whatever we can to protect all of our students and we will continue to update the campus as we learn more in the weeks and months ahead.
For students who have specific concerns about their DACA status, consider visiting Cabrini’s Center on Immigration webpage at cabrini.edu/immigration for more information, or reach out to the Center’s Director, Abel Rodriguez, at abel.rodriguez@cabrini.edu.
In October (date/time to be determined), The Center on Immigration and the Wolfington Center will host a Know Your Rights workshop for the community. The workshop is designed to provide information to assert one’s rights in encounters with law enforcement. This event is free and open to the public.
There are also a number of resources on campus to provide support, including the Wolfington Center, Campus Ministry, Counseling and Psychological Services, and, of course, Cabrini’s faculty.
It is important to remember that our University is named for the Patron Saint of Immigrants, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, who along with her Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus were tireless champions of immigrants from all walks of life. Today, the Missionary Sisters continue that work and have a corporate stance calling for “Just Policies for Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum Seekers.” Please join me in praying that our country does the right thing and will soon give permanent legal status to all DACA recipients.
Regards,
Dr. Taylor
Donald B. Taylor, PhD