Late last year the administration in Washington D.C. rescinded the DACA immigration policy, DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. At that time the University of Colorado announced our unified position of standing by these individuals, many of whom attend or work at our university. So we started a series at CU and at CU engineering we are all dreamers and this series is to help tell the stories of our Dreamer students. So we've got another one for you. And as this debate continues in D.C. we'll continue sharing their stories.
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And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the college of engineering applied science presents; On CUE. Here's your host Phil Larson.
Phil Larson
Late last year the administration in Washington D.C. rescinded the DACA immigration policy DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. And at that time the University of Colorado announced our unified position of standing by these individuals many of whom attend or work at our university. So we started a series at CU and at CU engineering we are all dreamers and this series is to help tell the stories of our Dreamer students. So we've got another one for you. And as this debate continues in D.C. we'll continue sharing their stories so, I hope you enjoy it.
DACA Student
I'm 23 years old. I'm a second year masters student in the aerospace engineering program at CU Boulder and I came to the United States when I was eight months old. I was born in Gomez Palacio, Durango, Mexico which is a, small, relatively small town in central Mexico right under Chihuahua in the middle of the desert. I don't remember anything about coming here. I know that at least my mom and brothers my brother and sister and I we all came on the airplane because this was before airport security was a little bit just ramped up after everything happened. But my dad he would go to the United States to work he would.. he started off just he would come and wash dishes for a couple months and then come back and like save up that money and then he would just do that a couple times I think. I think eventually he learned that washing dishes wasn't the most economic investment of his time. So he started to learn a skilled trade. So he got into the HVAC industry and I mean now today, like 20-23 some years later he owns his own HVAC company and he's very skilled and he's a he's a resource for a lot of other HVAC technicians and his experience is just it speaks for itself. You know he started off just coming here washing dishes. So that's essentially how we ended up coming here he saved up enough money so that we could all come together. And um yeah I don't remember anything about it. I was only eight months old I don't remember anything about Mexico.
I did get to go. Back home through the advance parole program of DACA last January. I spent two weeks there visiting my grandparents because they were sick very sick and I just had to spend two weeks there with them getting to know the place where I was born. It was really pretty life changing experience. I came back and I just felt really grateful for the opportunities my parents had given me. Seeing kind of where we came from and how we started and just my home the home where we lived at one point. It's pretty interesting stuff.
When we moved straight to Denver Colorado, we moved around a bit all throughout Denver pretty much every part of Denver we lived in at some point. But we've been living in Denver the whole time I've been here.
I get interested in aerospace. Actually interested in space just because I really liked looking into stars and kind of looking at the moon. Ever since I was a kid I had a just a couple experiences that really impacted me kind of just looking up at the sky. And honestly I never had much to do with airplanes or rockets or engineering stuff like that because I just didn't know what that kind of stuff I actually didn’t know anybody who is an engineer or what engineering was. The closest thing I had was my dad like being an HVAC tech. He kind of told me a little bit about the thermodynamic principles and things like that. But it was it was more practical as opposed to theoretical. But I think I just really appreciate just looking at the sky and made me think about what's out there and thinking like you know the final frontier just wanting to explore. That which you know it's probably the one thing we know the least about. And it really made me want to go to space and learn about the stuff and just be a new pioneer. I definitely I want to be an astronaut. I've had this dream for a while. And it's it's pretty disheartening sometimes being DACA because you can't you're told you're not even a real citizen or real person. You're not respected as someone in the United States. Obviously you can't really be an astronaut which is you know that's the first requirement. But I you know I go back and forth kind of being a little bit pessimistic and regain my optimism just like being here at CU Boulder. I get the chance to actually talk to the astronauts every now then and I mean I have had pizza and some some beverages the other night with a former astronaut and he just told us all about his space experience and that's just unreal to hear about that kind of stuff. So you know that kind of recharged my batteries.
So as I mentioned before I'm aerospace engineering student so I've obviously wanted to intern and work at various different aerospace companies and they've shown interest in me and you know I gotten offers and a lot of interest but when the issue comes up about being DACA and not being a U.S. citizen you know they have to immediately rescind those offers. And so this meant that most of the time I've had to work in in other industries. This is usually, actually was all over the map. So I did some work and kind of atmospheric science doing some engineering for that kind of stuff. It's kind of a close to space-ish that's kind of why I went that route. Recently I've been doing some research in combustion and actually laser absorption technologies. Which is kind of are all from aerospace but it's actually just really interesting stuff. And next up I'm going to be doing an internship with the automotive industry doing some test engineering. So I'm pretty excited for that. You know it's obviously not what I want to be doing in the end but I think that if I just keep getting the skills that I need to keep just making myself a valuable resource to these companies eventually you know this will, this will allow me to work in the aerospace industry hopefully you know something there's some resolve in March or you know. Politicians are able to come up with a decision and I'm hoping that by that time I'll have the skills that I need to be able to transition over to the aerospace industry.
Well I would tell them to take a step back and try to not think about DACA students and just anyone with Dacca number an economic asset. You know something. That can you know boost our economy or not. I would urge them to kind of consider our, the emotional impact that DACA has and what it really means for us to have received DACA and what it would mean to have this taken away. I don't know if these politicians have ever been told that they weren't something that they really thought they were. You know they wanted to be an artist or inventor or a politician and someone just told them like no you aren't that you can't be that it's not what you are you. You're not this well that's it's kind of the way we've lived our entire lives. But it wasn't about being an artist or an engineer or whatever it was actually just being about people telling us you're not really from where you think you are you're not you don't belong here. And that's the way we've been living our entire lives and that isn't easy. On top of that you know we have to actually live our lives and try to be something and do something with ourselves. So I would just urge them to kind of you know try to put themselves in our shoes and think about how this makes us feel just leaving us in this limbo state. I just feel like I've been in a limbo my entire life not knowing what's going to happen. So I just urge them to you know put themselves in our shoes and really think about the emotional impact it has on DACA students because that is just as important as the economic impact because, we're people too.
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