Small Step Could Bring Big Relief to Young Undocumented Immigrants

President Biden on Tuesday announced an initiative that could be life-changing for hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults, known as Dreamers, whose ability to live and work in the United States has long been tied to a temporary immigration program that has been on life support.

The new directive will enable many beneficiaries of an Obama-era program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, to swiftly receive employer-sponsored work visas for the first time. Eventually, the young immigrants could apply through their employers for green cards, or permanent lawful residency.

The new policy is one of two new immigration measures the administration announced on Tuesday. It means that a generation of young people who entered the country illegally as children will no longer be dependent on whether the DACA program, implemented as a temporary fix in 2012 and ensnared ever since in complex litigation, survives or dies.

For many, the program has allowed them to remain in the only country they really know. Sebastian Melendez, a 25-year-old registered nurse at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, said his DACA status had enabled him to work alongside surgeons doing innovative gastrointestinal procedures, buy a car, rent an apartment and help his parents financially.

But as the program was alternately halted and renewed by the courts, he has faced a constant threat of possible deportation.