Introducing: Out of the Shadows - Dreamers

Out of the Shadows is a podcast about America’s tangled history of immigration. Last season, we tackled Ronald Regan’s 1986 amnesty act, season 2 will trace the origins of DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a contentious executive order to protect undocumented young people from being deported. Issued by former President Barack Obama in 2012, DACA was meant to be a temporary stop gap on a broken immigration system. Hosted by award-winning New York Times writer Erick Galindo and entrepreneur and best-selling author Patty Rodriguez, welcome to season 2 of Out of the Shadows: Dreamers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I remember being undocumented and very very afraid.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
We're talking about the Dreamers.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
But this isn't Obama's story. This is their story about
how they came out of the shadows.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
What we learned is that you're actually much safer the
more you are out.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It's not that they weren't afraid. They were afraid. At
every moment. They were afraid.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
I mean they were kids.

Speaker 5 (01:44):
The movement pushed Obama and his administration to create DACA
because otherwise it would have just kept reporting all of us.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Listen to Out of the Shadows Dreamers on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.