About a month ago, the current administration in DC rescinded the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) immigration policy. At that time, the University of ColoradoÌýÌýour unified position ofÌýÌý– many of whom attend our university.
Tomorrow, October 5th, is an important deadline for some individuals affected by this policy to renew their DACA status. We haveÌýÌýto help, and it’s not too late. Contact Violeta Chapin if you have questions.
And we’ll continue sharing the stories of our Dreamers. At CU Engineering, we are all Dreamers.
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer
And now from the University of Colorado in Boulder, the college engineering and applied science presents; On CUE. Here’s your host: Phil Larson.
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Phil Larson
It was nearly a month ago when word came out of D.C. that the current administration was ending the DACA program. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, is an American immigration policy enacted under the Obama administration that allowed some individuals who entered the country as minors to remain during renewable two year periods of deferred action from deportation also making them eligible for work permits. We have a number of DACA students here at the University of Colorado Boulder. They're also known as Dreamers. There's about 800,000 individuals known as dreamers nationwide. And we thought it would be a good time to feature some of their stories just who they are where they came from what they want to let people know especially in D.C. as they debate these issues and their goals for the future. What they want to accomplish here. Our university has been out in front our president our chancellor on supporting and standing with these individuals. And same with Dean here in the College of Engineering and Applied Science so we're going to start that series today. It's notable, October 5th is the deadline for certain dreamers to submit their renewal application and we have resources to aid them in that process, lawyers and we have actually through the generosity of residents here in the community in Boulder. We have funds for dealing with the $495 plus application fee. So, there's still time if you do need to do your renewal for that. But for now, let's listen to one of our student dreamers and we'll continue to do that over the coming months. So I hope you enjoy it.
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Student
I'm 20 years old I am currently studying computer science this is my senior year. And I came here when I was 8 years old. I was born in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, MexicoÌýand I grew up in South Denver. I got excited about computer science I think when I was in middle school my friend and I, we decided to try out creating our own web sites. So back then that was like an early introduction into some like small scale encoding. And then from there when I was in high school I would just spend a lot of time on YouTube googling different or YouTubing different tutorials on different programming languages. And then that sort of led to me taking classes in computer science. And so where we are now I think what got me most interesting coding was I've never thought of myself as a super creative person but when I did do coding when I was programming I always found that I was able to bring out that creative side of me and just like being able to design a program and there's just so many ways to do it. And you're like you start from scratch but you're like designing a new solution to a problem. And it was just so exciting for me. So it really drew me. I really liked how there was like a really low barrier for to start doing it. It wasn't like I didn't need a certain like high end hardware or anything like that I could just go ahead and start from whatever sort of resources I had. And so I think from the beginning it was just mostly on my own. And then the classes I took sort of solidified that. I came here when I was eight years old. I just remember back home everything there was a lot of poverty. And so we kind of wanted… my parents wanted to get me away from that and they wanted to give me the opportunity of an education.
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And so ever since I came here, I was eight years old, ever since then I've known my status and that's I think that's sort of what pushed me to like strive for education and make sure I didn't disappoint my parents in that sense. As a senior in computer science I am working on my senior capstone. I decided to take the entrepreneurial capstone pathway and just because I'm interested in learning on how to start a startup how to… learn the business aspects of it. I feel confident in the engineering school having taught me the engineering skills and if I ever if I ever want to start a company in the future I want to learn the business side of that. And the people skills and sort of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. So I decided to take that Capstone and we're pretty early on there. But were starting to form teams and getting ready to create a startup. Well in 10 years I hope that I'm… hope to have work to have a successful software engineering position somewhere or have created my own company maybe and I want to be able to give back to my community in some sense. I want them to know that we’re hard workers and we don't take anything for granted. We understand the difficulties that you know we go through and so because of that we always try to work as hard as we can to be good citizens and be good people. And so I want them to see that value in us. I think yeah, I've always just been love being able to make life easier for people and sort of I think good software engineering that's what drew me a lot to it is how easy it is to create something that's going to simplify someone's life or make it just easier to go about doing everyday things. And so I think that was one of the big passions. And I think the reason why I want to pursue entrepreneurship maybe in the future is I want to be able to do that but have like control over our values as a company and sort of also be able to give back to my communities through that. DACA for me I think it gave me the opportunities to do the things I'm doing today. So through it I've been able to find internships and help fund my education. And so I think it's really helped in that goal that I've had to get my education and I think what I would tell them is just I would want them to see the value that we bring to this country and to see how. How we can be you know valuable assets.
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I'm 20 years old. I'm a senior in computer science. I came here when I was eight and I'm a Dreamer.
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Announcer
This has been ON CUE. For more information visit Colorado.edu/engineering