Immigration Reform for Only Illegal Immigration Was A Major Oversight by the Administration

The exclusion of documented dreamers from President Biden’s recent immigration reform not only subverts the principles of the American immigration system that motivated the action but will also exacerbate the complications they face in a broken immigration system.

Documented dreamers are children of long-term visa holders who entered the United States at a young age and have spent their entire lives in the United States. However, the children of these long-term visa holders will “age out” of their dependent status because the current law only allows them to remain as dependents on their parent’s visa until 21. While they can transfer on to other visas such as the student visa, after completing their education, they must leave the country they grew up in, unless they are fortunate enough to be sponsored by an employer. This creates a brain drain for talents that were cultivated in the United States.

Although I bear no ill will towards undocumented dreamers or the decision made, I do question the lack of action taken for those who have a legal status and are facing the same difficult situation of being separated from their families. The only difference between myself and undocumented dreamers is that documented dreamers came to the United States legally and have maintained legal status. Is it then fair to the foundational values of our immigration system to not include any action on those who followed the legal pathways?

In a statement from the administration, Vice President Kamala Harris said that the rationale for this reform was to “unleash their skills, ideas and potential right here in the country that has invested in their success, to the benefit of our economy and our communities” and to “remain with their families and contribute to our communities”. While I applaud the desire of the administration to take steps to fix the immigration system, I would then ask how children of legal immigrants should not fall into these same desires.

Would it not be a prudent economic choice to also unleash the skills of the 87% of documented dreamers who are in the STEM fields? Or the $30 Billion in net fiscal value that is generated for the United States? And, is it fair to exclude the 250,000 documented dreamers from these actions and have them be separated from their families? Once documented dreamers age out, they are forced to either find another temporary path to stay or self-deport from the United States. So, not only would the country have a negative economic path, but the child would also be separated from their friends and family. This makes the initial reasoning for the reform entirely hollow for a group of Americans.

It is not as if the administration is unaware of this issue either. Last week, a bipartisan letter was sent to the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS calling on the Biden administration to protect documented dreamers from deportation. This letter was signed by 43 lawmakers from members of both parties. As a result, an action taken to support documented dreamers would have the political backing from the administration’s party and their opposition.

Without action, these children will also be forced into the same backlogs that their parents had to face, but with added complications. By allowing undocumented dreamers to apply for the H1B by entering the H1B lottery without changing the allotted picks, the administration has also exacerbated only further exacerbated a struggling H1B system. With the new policy, the rate at which legal dreamers face self-deportation will only increase since they will be less likely to be selected. Thus making the desire to help the immigrant communities that have helped to build America a moot desire for the documented dreamers community.

The reforms, while rooted in good intentions, fail to address some of the people it seemingly sought to fix in the first place. The Biden administration has made a mistake by not including reforms for the children of long-term visa holders. These actions taken to support undocumented migrants, but not approve a parallel plan for documented dreamers, have both piled on to struggles that documented dreamers already face and made them feel alienated from their country.