University of California leaders have come out in support of a proposed rule by the Biden administration that would preserve and fortify the program that provides legal protections for young people who were brought to the United States as children.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, allows recipients to go to college, hold jobs and contribute to their communities without fear of deportation. It has allowed thousands of young people who came to the U.S. as children to safely build lives in the only country that many of them have ever known.

UC President Michael V. Drake, M.D., and all 10 UC chancellors sent a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Nov. 22, strongly supporting the Biden administration’s effort to shore up the program and stressing its importance to the University and its roughly 3,400 DACA recipients.

“The DACA program has been extraordinarily successful, benefitting hundreds of thousands of DACA participants, along with their families, schools, employers, and American society more generally,” the letter states. “For UC in particular, the thousands of DACA participants who have enrolled at UC as students, worked at UC as employees, and represented UC as graduates have brought irreplaceable perspectives and talents to the University.”

Read the full story from the UC Newsroom

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