Dreams Put On Hold

The population of undocumented immigrants includes over a million individuals known as “Dreamers,” who are for all intents and purposes naturalized Americans but are not counted among the American citizens. Dreamers have grown up believing in the American dream of one day being able to develop themselves into hard-working, accomplished and fully recognized Americans. Unfortunately, however, Dreamers are caught in a limbo of hope: their undocumented status forces them to work and live in the “underground,” or risk being deported to an unfamiliar country. After years of activism, the Dreamers found limited protection under an executive action introduced by former-President Barack Obama, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). DACA deferred deportation and gave the Dreamer the ability to legally work within the United States. Unfortunately, DACA’s provisional protection of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers also created gaps of its own: many other naturalized residents have been excluded and those covered by the DACA program remain limited in education and work. DACA’s protection is also limited in practice and time; it lasts for only two years before needing to be renewed and it can be revoked at any time. Only through legislation creating a “path to citizenship” and/or through formal naturalization can the Dreamers’ nightmare end and normalcy be instated. But precisely this idea of a “path to citizenship” has become the object of invective by anti-immigrant politics of Trump and the Republican Party. The Republican Party has worked to define itself as the party of White America by fomenting fear and anxiety over immigrant populations, whose mere existence or growth it presents as a threat. With continuing Republican government control, the Dreamer will not be able to legalize their status and will remain to be limited with their American dreams.