Biden proposes a path to citizenship. Some Dreamers have already bailed.

Published February 5, 2021.

Katharine Gin, Immigrants Rising’s Cofounder and Executive Director, and Geidy Portocarrero, a former Immigrants Rising scholar, talk about the importance of helping undocumented young people find opportunities elsewhere.

“I grew up thinking that everything you want can only be achieved in the U.S.,” says Geidy Portocarrero, whose parents left Peru for the U.S. when she was 13 and who today lives in Canada. “It was so hard for me to leave the States and not consider any other country. I thought, ‘this is where my dreams will happen. Why leave?’”

“There are no role models for [undocumented young people considering life elsewhere]. When we started the project and were talking to people about life outside the U.S., the first thing people thought about was deportation,” says Ms. Gin.

Ms. Gin says that immigrant advocates who have fought so hard for the right to remain in the U.S. have in some ways framed their options as binary: to stay or go, with go meaning a return home that may be tinged with failure. “I think [this binary thinking] plays with immigrants’ understanding of their own freedom to go elsewhere and that they might actually be wanted and valued elsewhere.”

Read the full story: Biden proposes a path to citizenship. Some Dreamers have already bailed. (The Christian Science Monitor)