By Maria Sacchetti | Wall Street Journal
Patients sometimes look up at Javier Quiroz, an acute-care nurse in one of Houston’s busiest hospitals, and ask if he is in the United States legally.
“No,” he says.
Then he tells them about the journey that has never ended. He crossed the U.S.-Mexico border at age 3 and, nearly three decades later, is among 11 million undocumented immigrants rooted inside the United States without a permanent legal claim to this country.
Quiroz is a foreigner with a Tennessee accent, a registered nurse who paid his way through college and then fought to save lives in a pandemic that nearly took his father and infected him, his wife and their baby girl.
He has watched Congress debate his future for decades, but a bill that would offer him U.S. citizenship has never reached the president’s desk.
“As this article poignantly illustrates, temporary measures such as DACA are no longer sufficient for the millions of Dreamers, farm workers, and undocumented persons who call America their home. Too much is at stake for these immigrants and their families to put their faith in the stroke of a pen of a presidential administration.’
“Executive orders such as DACA have certainly changed millions of lives for the better, but the reality is that the time has come for legislation- such as the U.S. Citizenship Act or American Dream and Promise Act- to garner enough bipartisan support to pass and permanently incorporate, as lawful permanent residents, those who wish to take part in the American dream.”–Darius Amiri, Rose Law Group Immigration Law Dept. Chair
