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Students at Rutgers University have sent more than 6,000 letters to their U.S. senators and representatives in support of a bill that would provide "provisional protected presence" and employment authorization to young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The students sent the letters through a Rutgers portal in response to a "call to action" from President Robert Barchi alerting students of an opportunity to advocate for the BRIDGE Act, which would provide temporary legal status to beneficiaries of former President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the event President Trump overturns it via an executive order.
Barchi stressed in a Monday message to all 67,000 Rutgers students that participation in the advocacy effort was "entirely optional; while I personally support extending the current DACA protections, I understand that some of you may not. I would never presume to tell you what to do with respect to legislative advocacy. We are offering this option to you because many in our community have participated in activities to bring attention to the plight and status of undocumented students. This call to action is intended to provide you with a way, if you so choose, to express support for legislation that would achieve the public policy for which so many of you have been advocating," Barchi wrote.
Barchi previously signed a letter from college presidents calling on Trump to continue and expand DACA. Pete McDonough, the university's senior vice president for external affairs, said the two calls are complementary.
"That the DACA protections would be subject to presidential whim puts students in a terribly uncertain position," McDonough said. "You could still have DACA as an executive order in place and you could have the BRIDGE Act, and there would be some certainty to it."
