Welcome the Dreamers
Congress should give millions of child immigrants a path to citizenship.
Ten years ago this week, President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA has been a political football ever since.
That’s a cruelty to the millions of people brought to America illegally as children and teenagers but who, even in the shadows, worked to live productive lives. And it’s a disservice to the nation, which needs these hard-working immigrants perhaps more than ever.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are about 611,000 active DACA recipients, and an estimated 1.2 million people who are eligible for the program. That includes 25,470 recipients in New York, and 56,000 eligible people.
This is not a free and easy ride, nor a shortcut to citizenship or permanent legal residency. The program allowed people brought into the U.S. illegally when they were under 16 to apply for two years of deferred deportation; they could renew when that time was up. They had to have not committed a significant crime, and had to have graduated from high school or have an equivalency certificate, or have been honorably discharged from the armed forces or Coast Guard.
DACA allowed these individuals to come out of the shadows and contribute to American society. The Center of American Progress reports that more than 200,000 of them are in jobs that put them on the front lines of essential — and vulnerable — workers during the COVID -19 pandemic. That includes some 29,000 in health care, nearly 15,000 teachers, and more than 140,000 in agriculture and other foodrelated jobs, from farms to packing plants to restaurants to grocery stores.
The program’s value to the country is all the more apparent at a time when employers in those fields, and many others, are scrounging for workers.
Though President Donald Trump’s attempt to dismantle the program thankfully failed, a federal court last year put it in legal limbo, barring new applications but allowing it to process renewals while the Department of Homeland Security addresses procedural problems with its creation.
The solution would be for Congress to pass the Dream Act, or similar legislation, to give the estimated 3 million “Dreamers” brought here as children the ability to obtain permanent lawful status provided they meet a host of even more rigorous legal and educational, military, or employment qualifications than DACA requires. Then, after five years, they could apply for citizenship.
We realize plenty of politicians would prefer to keep using the Dreamers as talking points in their anti-immigrant messaging and fear-mongering. And we’re well aware that giving Dreamers a path to citizenship feeds into the hateful, paranoid “Great Replacement Theory” going around even mainstream Republican circles. But in the real world, America needs Dreamers — their labor, their service, and, well, their dreams, the kind of dreams of a better life that built this country, and continue to invigorate and strengthen it. Congress must get this done, before another decade, or even another year, goes by.