Corrected 4:09 p.m. | Democrats renewed their push Wednesday to provide a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of so-called documented Dreamers who grew up legally in the U.S. but risk deportation when they turn 21 years old.
At a press conference, California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla touted his bill to permanently protect roughly 250,000 immigrants who grew up in the U.S. as dependents on their parents’ temporary visas, and graduated from American universities, but aged out of that dependent status.
“For these young people, turning 21 means facing an impossible choice,” Padilla said. “Either to leave your family and self-deport to a country that you barely remember, or to stay in the United States living, undocumented, in the shadows.”
