The process to become an American citizen can take decades for people in the DACA program — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — which allows young immigrants to remain in the U.S. who were brought here illegally as children.
“This is literally the only place I’ve ever lived,” said Matias Bruno, civic engagement coordinator with Make the Road NJ. “I came here when I was three years old, so anything I experienced in Uruguay, I might have forgotten.”
“It’s a frustrating process for many of us,” said Erik Cruz Morales, policy and advocacy manager for the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. “It’s very uncertain what the future holds.”
Under a new program announced by the Biden administration, certain DACA recipients will have a streamlined path toward citizenship, including people with college degrees and people who have been married to an American citizen for at least 10 years. Some have questioned the timing of the program’s unveiling less than six months before the presidential election.
Morales said the new program “is a great step in the right direction,” but he said, “I think it’s political reasons that he’s doing this now, when he could have been doing this at the beginning of his term.”
