If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

Main content

The DREAM Act and DACA

Overview

  • Undocumented immigrants are foreign-born people who entered the United States, but did not get authorization to enter the United States and/or do not have the proper documentation to live in the United States.
  • Once undocumented immigrants enter the United States, they have no pathway to citizenship regardless of what age they entered.
  • President Obama issued a presidential memorandum that created the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This program delayed the deportation of young undocumented immigrants so long as they met certain criteria, and it also gave them access to benefits they did not have before.
  • In 2020, the Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s attempts to end DACA, and the program is still intact today.

Who are undocumented immigrants and where do they come from?

Group of people holding signs that say "UNDOCUMENTED."
Mari Cruz and others from Arizona Sin Papeles protested outside the Democratic National Convention in 2012. Image credit: Chandra Narcia, Flickr Commons
An undocumented immigrant, also called an unauthorized immigrant, is a person who either:
  • entered the United States without proper authorization from the United States government, OR
  • entered with legal authorization, but stayed beyond what the government allowed.
In 2014, the Center for Migration Studies found that in 2014, the majority of undocumented immigrants had overstayed their period of admission after getting a temporary visa. The research found that since 2007, most undocumented immigrants came into the United States by overstaying a visa rather than entering the United States without inspection. 1
There are several reasons a person would enter the United States without authorization. Some may enter because they fear for their safety, especially if they come from a country where they face a lot of violence. They may come to the United States for financial reasons, as they can make more money working in the United States than their home country. Or for any number of other reasons.
In 2017, the Pew Research Center estimated that there were roughly 10.3 to 10.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States out of a total population of 328 million people. Most undocumented immigrants in the United States come from Mexico, Central America, or South America, and nearly two-thirds of them have lived in the United States for more than ten years.2
78 percent of undocumented immigrants come from the Americas. 14 percent come from Asia-Pacific Islands, 4 percent are from Europe, 2 percent are from Sub-Saharan Africa, and 1 percent are from Middle East-North Africa.
Check your understanding
Given the information in this pie chart, where are undocumented immigrants most likely to come from?
Choose 1 answer:

What life is like for undocumented immigrants

Undocumented immigrants are just like anyone else living in the United States. They have families, attend school, and participate in their communities. They care about their neighbors and want to make a better life for themselves and their families. However, unlike others in the United States, undocumented immigrants face several challenges.
Without proper documentation, they are not eligible to work in the United States. They often work in factories, in restaurants, or in childcare-related work where they get paid in a way that isn’t reported to the federal government. They cannot apply for a passport, which means they cannot legally leave the United States. They cannot apply for any social services, like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, or food assistance programs.
Undocumented immigrants face the constant threat of deportation. If they are found out, the government can take legal steps to send them back to their home country. This is particularly scary for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as young children. Could you imagine growing up in the United States and then being deported to a country where you might not know anyone or not even know how to speak the language? This is a reality for many young, undocumented people.
Check your understanding
Which of the following challenges do undocumented immigrants commonly face when living in the United States?
Choose all answers that apply:

How can undocumented immigrants get legal status?

Following a surge in immigration in the 1990s, Congress passed a law in 1996 which created tighter restrictions for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status. Before 1996, undocumented immigrants who had been in the United States for at least seven years could get permanent legal status if they could show being deported would cause them “extreme hardship.”
The new immigration law in 1996 increased the amount of years from seven to ten and also added “exceptional and extremely unusual" to describe the hardship undocumented immigrants would face if the United States government deported them. Getting separated from family did not qualify as an “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship.”4
As it stands in 2020, undocumented immigrants have no formal pathway to citizenship. There are only three paths that an immigrant can take to get authorization to enter the United States: employment, reunification with family, or humanitarian protection. For the most part, most undocumented immigrants do not meet the requirements for family reunification or employment based reasons for immigration and cannot access humanitarian protection because of how they entered the United States.
There are a limited number of green cards that are available to interested immigrants. The United States only gives out 140,000 green cards every year, and only five thousand of those are given for jobs that do not require a college degree. There are only 500,000 visas available for family sponsored immigration, and it can take decades to obtain a visa. Family sponsorship for a visa is limited to close family members like a parent, sibling, spouse, or child.
To go through the process to get legal permanent status, most undocumented immigrants would have to leave the United States to obtain a legal visa. If they have lived in the United States and been out of status for over six months, they cannot go through proper legal channels of immigration for three years. If they have been out of status for more than a year, they have to wait ten years. There is also no guarantee that if they leave and apply for a green card that they will get one. Undocumented immigrants often think that it is to risky to go through the legal process because of these barriers.

The struggle for the DREAM Act

First proposed in 2001, the original version of the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act aimed to allow undocumented immigrant students who met certain criteria protection from deportation and then allow them to apply for and receive lawful permanent residency. Members in the House of Representatives and the Senate have proposed versions of the DREAM Act multiple times over the past eighteen years.
Despite having support from both sides of the aisle, Congress has never passed the DREAM Act. Members of Congress who oppose the DREAM Act often argue that the DREAM Act would encourage more immigrants to enter the United States with authorization.
Photograph of a protest march. There are several signs visible, including one that quotes John Lennon's "Imagine," "You may say I'm a DREAMer, but I am not the only one."
Protesters at the Los Angeles March for Immigrant Rights. Image credit: Molly Adams, Flickr Commons
Who does the DREAM Act help? We call those who would directly benefit from the DREAM Act DREAMers. DREAMers are young undocumented immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States as young children, and they have lived in the United States for most of their lives. The most recent version of the DREAM Act, the DREAM Act of 2019, would provide DREAMers an opportunity to stay in the United States without the threat of deportation and a way to get legal status.
Results from a poll done by the Pew Research Center. The results are that 74 percent of Americans say they would favor Congress passing a law granting permanent legal status to immigrants who came to the United States illegally when they were children. 24 percent say they would oppose it.
According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of Americans support Congress passing a law that would give undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children permanent status. 5 Despite this significant public support, Congress could not get enough votes to pass the DREAM Act. The most recent proposal, the DREAM Act of 2019, was introduced in the Senate in March of 2019, but never made it to the Senate floor for a vote.
Check your understanding
What does the DREAM Act seek to provide to undocumented people who were brought to the country as young children?
Choose 1 answer:

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

“In the absence of any immigration action from Congress to fix our broken immigration system, what we’ve tried to do is focus our immigration enforcement resources in the right places. This is not a path to citizenship. It's not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure that lets us focus our resources wisely while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people.”
-President Barack Obama in an announcement of his executive action to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, 2012
Congress’s inability to pass comprehensive legislation that protected DREAMers led President Obama to issue a presidential memorandum in 2012 that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Unlike the DREAM Act, DACA does not create a path to lawful permanent residency for undocumented immigrants. What DACA does is prioritize deportation efforts toward immigrants breaking the law and recent arrivals. At the same time, it deferred deportation for younger people who meet certain criteria.
Eligible DREAMers had to have been brought to the United States as young children (fifteen or younger) before 2007 and could not be older than thirty-one in 2012 when the program went into effect. They also had to be physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and when they applied for DACA. They had to be in school, have graduated from high school, or gotten a general education certificate (GED). They also could not have been convicted of a felony, a significant misdemeanor (like driving under the influence), three or more other misdemeanors, and cannot pose a threat to national security or public safety.
DACA allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the United States on a two-year basis, and it makes them eligible for work authorization, healthcare, and state-issued driver’s licenses. Participants can renew after the two-year period is up, however, they are still not considered lawful immigrants, and they can not apply for naturalization. Since the start of the program, approximately 793,000 undocumented immigrants have received DACA status.6
Check your understanding
What is the purpose of DACA?
Choose 1 answer:

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden talking with a group of young people in the Oval Office.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with DREAMers who have gotten deferred action and American citizens who have family members that are undocumented. Image credit: Pete Souza, Official White House Photo, Wikimedia Commons
Vehement opposition to DACA started as soon as the program went into effect. Opponents to DACA pointed to the fact that President Obama created DACA via presidential memorandum rather than as a bill passed through both houses of Congress and signed into law. They root their argument in the fact that the Constitution does not give the President power to make unilateral decisions on immigration.
Opponents also argue that by giving undocumented immigrants a way to defer deportation is like giving them amnesty and takes away employment opportunities from citizens. Proponents of DACA point out that the program only allows deferment of deportation temporarily. DACA recipients do not get lawful permanent status, and if they break the law or fail to meet any other criteria, they lose the protections offered by DACA. Also, thousands of DACA recipients serve in high-need positions like teachers or as health-care professionals or in support jobs. 7
In 2017, President Trump ordered the end of DACA, aiming to phase out the protections offered by the program. Under his direction, the program stopped accepting new applications and refused to allow recipients to renew their application. His argument for ending the program was that he wanted Congress to pass a law that made DACA permanent.
In a statement issued to the public, Trump wrote, “I do not favor punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognize that we are a nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.” 8
In response to President Trump’s order to end DACA, several people filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to reinstate DACA. In January 2018, a federal court issued an injunction forcing United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to accept renewal applications. However, first-time DACA applicants still could not apply for DACA. The case continued to make its way through the federal court system before eventually landing at the Supreme Court.
States began offering protections for undocumented immigrants at the state-level. Now, remember, states cannot offer immigrants a path to citizenship or change residency requirements. Those powers reside with the federal government. However, fifteen states allowed undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses, including California, New Mexico, and Utah, as well as Washington, DC and Puerto Rico. Sixteen states also allowed undocumented immigrants to get tuition benefits, like in-state tuition prices for state colleges and universities.

The Supreme Court rules on DACA

Photograph of protestors. The most prominent protest sign states, "Defend DACA. Defend DREAMers"
At a DACA rally in San Francisco, protesters hold various signs and banners to protest the Trump Administration's attempt to dismantle the program. Image credit: Pax Ahimsa Gethen, Wikimedia Commons
The Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that President Trump’s cancellation of the DACA program violated the Administrative Procedures Act and that the DACA program should stand. They ruled that the Trump administration did not give a sufficient rationale or reason for getting rid of DACA. Their ruling did not touch on the constitutionality of the original executive action or whether President Trump can rescind the program in the future. However, it protected the program from cancelation at the moment.
President Trump has since stated that he plans to work with Congress to pass comprehensive immigration legislation that would create a merit-based system for who receives the protections offered by the DACA program. 9 However, immigration advocates continue to be skeptical and aren’t sure whether the president won’t try to get rid of the program again.

Want to join the conversation?