A comparison of four different Dreamer protection bills – the BRIDGE Act, SUCCEED Act, RAC Act, and Dream Act. FCNL considers the provisions outlined in the Dream Act to be the best option available for Dreamers.
FCNL’s Priorities for Legislation
The Friends Committee on National Legislation advocates for Congress to pass legislation that offers immigrants who grew up in the United States and are undocumented – also known as Dreamers – an opportunity to work towards citizenship. FCNL’s priorities for Dreamer protection legislation include:
Enacting a path to citizenship for the largest number of young immigrants who entered the United States as children and grew up here.
Outlining a path to citizenship that is swift and easy to navigate, without requiring Dreamers to fulfill excessive or harsh requirements.
Ensuring that Dreamers and other immigrants’ safety and opportunities to access the U.S. immigration system are not threatened.
Enacting protections into law without exacerbating existing injustices within the U.S. immigration system, which currently separates families, keeps too many people in detention, and infringes upon the civil and human rights of immigrants and citizens alike.
Definitions
CPR: Conditional Permanent Residency – This is a conditional status that requires individuals to stay in compliance with certain requirements. Both the SUCCEED and RAC Acts have bars for inadmissibility, deportability, and revocation of CPR status.
LPR: Lawful Permanent Residency – once applicants have accomplished certain requirements they can apply for LPR/a green card and then follow process to naturalization and citizenship.
Other Considerations
All of the bills have bars for inadmissibility around certain convictions of misdemeanors and felonies. Bars under SUCCEED are the most stringent. Of all the bills, the Dream Act is the most forgiving for prior run-ins with the criminal justice system, although the RAC Act has a slightly better provision regarding multiple misdemeanor convictions.
Under SUCCEED, individuals must also sign waiver barring them from most immigration relief – e.g. most work or protective visas, or obtaining a green card through family sponsorship – if terms of CPR status are violated.
Unrelated to Dreamers, SUCCEED also waives the right for individuals who overstay their visas to see an immigration judge and bars them from almost all other immigration relief. It also curbs the authority of the President to grant humanitarian or other kinds of parole to certain populations. SUCCEED also would prolong family separation by needlessly barring Dreamers from sponsoring their children or spouse after obtaining LPR status, even though LPRs are generally eligible to sponsor these family members.
More detailed analysis
National Immigrant Law Center, 2017 Legislation to Protect DACA Recipients/Immigrant Youth: https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Dream-2017-legislation-compared.pdf
American Immigration Lawyers Association Policy Brief, How Dreamer Protection Bills Measure Up: http://www.aila.org/infonet/how-dreamer-protection-bills-measure-up
