January 2018 Prayer Partner Message
Dear friends,
We’ve asked you on several occasions in the past few months to pray for “Dreamers” the young people, including roughly 800,000 who have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, who came to the U.S. as children. As you have likely heard, with the termination of the DACA program, these young people will lose their work authorization and be put at risk of deportation—in some cases, to countries of birth that they cannot even remember.
The good news is that most Members of Congress and the President all say they want to reach a legislative deal that would allow Dreamers to be able to stay and continue to work lawfully in the U.S. Unfortunately, despite bipartisan proposals in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate that pair relief for Dreamers with improvements to border security, Congress thus far seems unable to reach a deal—and the clock is ticking. Each day that passes, more individuals lose their DACA protections, which means their employers are forced to lay them off.
Today, as negotiations continue, tied to debates over passing a federal budget so as to keep the federal government from shutting down, I want to ask you to do three things:
- Pray. Take a few minutes, at least, and ask God to intervene at this critical moment. Pray for your Representative and Senators and the President by name. We’ve prepared a free downloadable five-day prayer guide that we encourage you use over the next several days
- Call. You have the power to act to influence your Senators’ and Representative’s views on this issue—and the Bible tells us we should “not withhold good… when it is in your power to act” (Proverbs 3:27). Our tool at www.PowerToAct.org will quickly help determine which Members of Congress represent your area, connect you to their offices over the phone, and even give you a sample script of what to say. It takes just a few minutes, and it really can make a difference
- Share. Nothing changes hearts and minds on this topic like the stories of Dreamers themselves. Our friends at Voices of Christian Dreamers have curated a number of testimonies from Dreamers themselves—in video, audio, and written forms—that might be worth highlighting on social media, along with an invitation to your friends and followers to also join you in prayer and advocacy
In Christ,
Matthew Soerens
U.S. Director of Church Mobilization, World Relief
National Coordinator, Evangelical Immigration Table
