First introduced in 2001, the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) provides an opportunity for young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children to be given a pathway toward U.S. citizenship. This immigration bill came to be established because of Tereza Lee, a Brazilian-born South Korean who moved to the U.S. with her parents in 1985 when she was two years old. She is an undocumented American referred to as the first DREAMer. As of 2018, approximately 3.6 million undocumented youth entered the U.S.

Tereza is a talented pianist and attended high school in Chicago. Ann Monaco, the artistic director of her school, encouraged Lee to apply to competitive music colleges. This led Lee to confide in Monaco about being undocumented because she did not have the required information to apply to colleges, such as a social security number. Monaco proceeded to contact U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois for assistance. Democratic Senator Durbin co-sponsored the DREAM Act with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and had wide support from other lawmakers and President George W. Bush, demonstrating the bipartisan support of this bill. However, before the Senate had the chance to vote in favor of the DREAM Act, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 occurred, which turned the U.S. government’s attention toward national security.

Since then, more than ten variations of the DREAM Act have been introduced in Congress with bipartisan support, but has never successfully passed into law. To qualify for residency status through the DREAM Act, immigrants had to prove that they came to the United States before turning 18 (this changed to 16 in the 2017 DREAM Act proposal), lived in the United States for five consecutive years since their arrival, received a high school diploma (or equivalent) from a U.S. school, demonstrated good moral character, and passed a criminal background review. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed an executive order for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an immigration policy that provides applicants a renewable two years of deferred action from deportation, and eligibility for a work permit. In September 2017, the Trump administration ended further applications to DACA and let the renewal of DACA expire. As of June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Trump’s attempt to terminate DACA.

Today, immigrant activists and advocates, like Tereza Lee, continue to fight for immigration reform. Media coverage and representation of immigration in the U.S. has often been framed as a Latinx issue. However, people of undocumented status come from all over the world, including Europeans and Canadians. Undocumented Asian American immigrants are currently estimated at 1.7 million.

In 2017 an estimated 8.5 million undocumented immigrants lived in the U.S. In 2018 the number has increased to 11.3 million, with around 3.6 million of those immigrants entering the U.S. before their 18th birthday. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services estimated the number of DACA recipients in 2017 was approximately 800,000.