Mark Zuckerberg invited three ‘Dreamers’ to his Silicon Valley home and live-streamed their conversation
Facebook founder urges Americans to approach congressional representatives to act on president Trump’s decision to end the DACA programme
By Caroline Cakebread
Tomás Evangelista’s status as undocumented immigrant thwarted his dream to join the military and made it hard for him to find a job.
Now he’s trying to help other Dreamers like him — immigrants without papers who arrived in this country as children — contend with similar and more pressing problems including homelessness. He founded a group called California Dreamers, which provides a place for such immigrants to share their stories and experiences and tries to help them tackle the issues they face.
“We wanted to be the solution for some of the issues in our community,” Evangelista said in a Facebook Live video.
Evangelista was one of three Dreamers who joined Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his Palo Alto, California, home on Wednesday for a conversation about the Dreamers and the impact of President Trump’s decision on Tuesday to end the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals programme, which protects such immigrants from deportation. Facebook posted the streaming video on Zuckerberg’s personal page on the site.
“I just thought it would be good to sit down and talk with some Dreamers about their stories and hear what their experience was like getting DACA,” Zuckerberg said as he introduced Evangelista and two other Dreamers, named Lizette and Maria.