Dreams and nightmares

Imagine if you were born overseas but grew up in America. After graduating from college, you start looking for a job. There’s just one problem; you do not have legal residency. As a result, the US government sends you back to your home country, a place you might not even remember. To many people, this would seem like a nightmare scenario.

Reason magazine has a recent article discussing this issue:

In 2008, Taroll arrived in the U.S. as a 10-year-old with his father, younger brother, and Preth, his mother, who had secured a job in the States at a tech company on an H-1B visa. He subsequently became a “Documented Dreamer”: the same moniker given to DACA recipients, except with a twist. Core to being a “Dreamer” under DACA’s purview is that they are undocumented, so Taroll didn’t qualify for the protection provided by the program—not in spite of coming to the U.S. legally, but because of it.

To benefit from the “Dreamer” program it is essential that your parents arrived in the US without permission.  The children of legal immigrants do not qualify.  Some are eventually able to obtain green cards, but the line is so long that many “age out” before they are able to achieve legal residency.  At that point they must leave the country:

So last month, Taroll was forced to self-deport to Taiwan, where his employer was able to secure him a spot. He does not know the language nor does he have any family ties to the country. “I grew up in my hometown of Boston as just a regular kid, never imagining that my status would define my decisions later in life,” he tells me. “And like many Documented Dreamers, we only truly understood the ramifications once we get closer to aging out and have to start planning for ways to remain in the only country that we know as home.”

Immigration is a contentious political issue in America.  And yet it seems implausible that many politicians on either side of the debate would knowingly support giving Dreamer status to only those children whose parents arrived in America illegally.  One way to ascertain the views of policymakers is to look at what happened when this quirk in the law was brought to the attention of legislators.  Is this what they intended? Here’s Reason: 

Some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have tried to answer that question. In 2021, Rep. Deborah Ross (D–N.C.) introduced a bill in the House to effectively close the Documented Dreamer loophole and pave a pathway for citizenship. . . . A version of that bill passed the House as an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). And then it was laid to rest in the Senate’s legislative graveyard after Sen. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa) rebuffed the proposal.