October 17, 2022
With DACA in Jeopardy, It’s Time for Congress to Act
By Lisa Herforth-Hebbert
Three-quarters of Americans support legal status for immigrants brought to the United States as children, yet Congress has failed to enact permanent protections.
Earlier this month, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit deemed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program “unlawful,” upholding a district court ruling from last year. The order will suspend grants for first-time applicants, though previous DACA recipients will continue to be protected—for now—while the case is sent back to the lower court in Texas. With this ruling, more than 600,000 Americans protected under DACA once again face unnecessary uncertainty and fear.
Passed in 2012 by President Obama, DACA is still the foremost piece of legislation protecting young undocumented immigrants from deportation after the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed to pass. In recent years, lawmakers have proposed ways to improve and expand DACA through initiatives like the America’s Children Act, which would provide lawful permanent resident status to certain college graduates who entered the United States as children. Unfortunately, Congress has not yet voted on the act.
Nevertheless, activists continue to fight for meaningful immigration reform. Earlier this year, Athulya Rajakumar, a recent graduate of the University of Texas, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on removing barriers to legal immigration. Although born in India, Rajakumar has lived and studied in the United States since she was 4 years old as a dependent on her mother’s visa. At 21, Rajakumar’s application for green card status was denied and she was faced with the possibility of deportation. Now, Rajakumar is a member of Improve the Dream, an advocacy group for the hundreds of thousands of young immigrants that are aging out of America’s broken immigration system.
