Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

Every presidential administration since Eisenhower had extended reprieves from deportation, known as deferred action, to certain categories of undocumented immigrants who were considered low priorities for arrest. Beginning in 1981, federal regulations explicitly authorized such immigrants to work. Combining these practices, the government could protect Dreamers from deportation while also making them eligible for work, bank loans, and financial aid to go to college. The proposals came with an additional slate of eligibility requirements. Recipients, for instance, would have to be either students, high school graduates, or members of the armed forces; they couldn’t have a criminal record, and there was a strict cutoff date for when they had to have arrived in the country. Roughly eight hundred thousand Dreamers qualified.