When people talk about a desire for immigrants to “follow the rules” or “come the right way,” they more often than not have only hazy understandings of the way immigration policy actually works but are imagining something like a white-collar professional getting a work visa and coming here with spouse and child in tow to live out the American Dream.
What they are probably not imagining, or even realize is possible, is that that child, having complied with all rules and lived legally in the country for decades, might face a loss of status and deportation simply from aging out, a situation faced by more than 250,000 children and young adults around the country. These so-called Documented Dreamers are coming up on 21st birthdays that should be occasions for celebration but which instead mark the dreaded endpoint of eligibility for dependent visas.
Their parents are often in years- or decades-long waiting periods for residency, owing to tight annual caps on work-based green cards. If and when the parents get the coveted cards, it will be far too late for their children, who are forced to scramble to get uncertain student visas or even leave the country despite growing up here.
An amendment to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act would provide these Dreamers much-needed relief by essentially freezing their age-based eligibility once they or their parents have properly filed applications for residency or additional status. The amendment is out of committee and must now be approved in a floor vote to protect these young people, who are for all practical purposes just as American as their native-born counterparts.
While the Democrats still hold Congress, they must also attempt to streamline and modernize an outdated legal immigration system and reach some resolution to protect the more well-known population of previously undocumented Dreamers, particularly as the DACA program remains in legal jeopardy. It’s politically popular, a moral imperative and a chance to notch a win with positive economic implications ahead of the midterms.
