Lawmakers Make Bipartisan Call for Aiding ‘Documented Dreamers’

The Biden administration should use tools like parole and deferred action to offer relief to children of long-term visa holders who are at risk of aging out of legal status, a bipartisan group of 45 lawmakers wrote in a letter.

The Thursday letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou highlights the growing interest in aiding about a quarter million young immigrants even as broad use of tools like parole to admit new immigrants to the US have come under criticism from key Republican lawmakers.

The immigrants, known as “documented dreamers,” are children of employment-based visa holders—most from India—who could lose their legal status when they turn 21 because of protracted backlogs for their parents’ green card applications.

“These young people grow up in the United States, complete their education in the American school system, and graduate with degrees from American institutions,” the letter said. “However, due to the long green-card backlog, families with approved immigrant petitions are often stuck waiting decades for permanent residence.”

The letter was led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Deborah Ross (D-N.C.). GOP House lawmakers Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), and Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) also signed.

Homeland Security should adopt a process to extend parole on a case-by-case basis to these children of immigrants at risk of aging out, the lawmakers said. The Biden administration has made broad use of its parole authority—a time-limited humanitarian status allowing immigrants to enter the US and work legally—to create a new pathway for people fleeing conflict and instability in countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti.

DHS should also clarify options to approve deferred action for children of long-term visa holders on a case-by-case basis, the lawmakers said. They noted that USCIS recently updated its policy manual to clarify uses of deferred action for individuals with approved Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petitions. It should do the same for documented dreamers, they wrote.

The letter also calls on DHS to expand eligibility for compelling circumstances employment authorization documents to include children of long-term visa holders at risk of aging out.

Those work permits are stopgap measures for employment-based visa holders in difficult situations jeopardizing their lawful status—like an H-1B worker facing a job loss—but are currently only available to principal beneficiaries of immigrant petitions.

Without passage of legislative solutions by Congress, urgent action by the administration is needed, said Dip Patel, founder of Improve the Dream, a grassroots group advocating for documented dreamers.

“Our country is not only losing young talent who were raised and educated here, but we’re also losing many of their parents, who have years of practical experience as small business owners or in fields like medicine, engineering, and artificial intelligence,” he said in a statement. “The economic case is clear and the moral case is clear. It is common sense.”