Kamala Harris's plan to provide DREAMers a pathway to citizenship, explained

Given the congressional gridlock, she plans to use executive action.

By Li Zhouli@vox.com Jun 13, 2019, 8:10am EDT

Establishing a path to citizenship for DREAMers — undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children — is a policy problem that’s eluded Congress for years. To overcome this standstill, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on Wednesday laid out a plan to get things done through executive action.

Harris’s proposal, the latest one she’s unveiled as part of her 2020 campaign, aims to eliminate current barriers that DREAMers face when it comes to applying for green cards, and ultimately gaining citizenship.

At this time, there is no clear pathway for roughly 2 million DREAMers to acquire citizenship, despite the fact that there have been myriad congressional efforts to remedy this issue, including a bill that recently passed the House. A very small fraction of DREAMers had previously obtained permanent legal status through the use of “advance parole,” though that option, too, has been halted by the Trump administration.

The obstacles DREAMers still face when attempting to achieve legal status are significant.

Currently, for example, lawful immigrants to the US are able to get a green card through both employer sponsorship and family sponsorship.

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https://www.vox.com/2019/6/13/18663029/kamala-harris-dreamers-immigrants-citizenship