Understanding the Fight Over the ‘Dreamers’ and DACA

The young immigrants known in the US as Dreamers, and the federal program known as DACA that was designed to protect them from deportation, have dominated the fraught debate over immigration reform in Washington for the better part of a decade. President Joe Biden wants to keep the program intact. But a US federal court, at the request of nine Republican-led states, has declared DACA illegal, which could lead to these immigrants being kicked out of the country.

The term refers to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children and have lived in America for much or most of their lives, despite technically not being allowed to be there. The name originated with a bill first proposed in the 2001-2002 Congress, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, that aimed to help such undocumented immigrants attend college in the US and earn legal permanent residency upon graduating. Although it was revised and re-introduced many times, the bill has never passed Congress, and it’s been upstaged in recent years by the more pressing debate over DACA, which Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, repeatedly vowed to repeal.