Reagan’s amnesty program gave Gen X immigrants the chance to succeed. DREAMers deserve the same | Guest Opinion

In the late 1980s, a major immigration reform, spearheaded by President Reagan and passed with bipartisan support in Congress, gave amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. In economic terms, what came next for these families after securing legal status is nothing short of inspirational.

But today, as ongoing legal battles threaten the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — DACA — and a Congressional effort to create a path to citizenship for DREAMers seems suddenly dead in the water, we risk creating an environment where, for the first time in almost 100 years, we fail to reap the benefits of what we know children of immigrants can achieve.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 gave amnesty to most undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before Jan. 1, 1982. President Reagan then used his executive authority to take things a step further, granting legal status to any minor under 18 whose parents were in the process of obtaining legal status themselves.

Over the next 30 years, a remarkable success story unfolded for these children. As economic historians, we use big data — such as historical Census records, federal tax data and even old documents from places like Ancestry.com — to study immigration. One of our most remarkable discoveries is how well children of immigrants have fared economically over 100 years of U.S. history.

By following millions of immigrant families, our research shows that children of immigrants — no matter what country their parents came from — have moved into the middle class at remarkable rates. This is true for children of immigrants born 100 years ago and for those born around 1980, around the time of the Reagan amnesty. This pattern holds for the children of immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Nigeria, Cambodia and many other countries.

These facts speak to the promise of immigration not only for immigrants, but also for the country. Even if some immigrants have low earnings and require federal assistance, their children’s high earnings and tax payments more than pay for the “debts” of their parents.

But sadly, there are reasons to worry that this incredible track record over the past century may no longer apply today — at least not for the nearly 1.5 million undocumented children of immigrants. These children have the potential to benefit from some of the same advantages that buoyed earlier generations of immigrant families, such as living in major metropolitan areas where rates of economic mobility are higher for everyone.

But one critical factor we can’t ignore is the role of legal status. Because of the Reagan-era amnesty, the Gen X children of modern immigrants whom we studied were raised by parents with legal status and likely had legal status themselves. Take this away, and we’re worried what we’ll find when we study more recent children of immigrants, like the DREAMers — group of undocumented immigrants who arrived themselves as children, and are so-named for the stalled DREAM Act in Congress.

It will take another 10 years for the DREAMers to be old enough for us to compare them with groups that came before. While we don’t yet have the data, we do know the outsized barriers they will face. Without a green card or citizenship, working outside of the cash economy will be difficult. As a result, many do not see the point in finishing high school. For those that do, applying to college or funding their education without access to the lending system has been an enormous challenge.

Fortifying DACA for those who are already a part of the program, as the Biden administration did in late October through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is a signal that these young people shouldn’t lose hope — and is the bare minimum of what they deserve.

But the new rule cannot override court orders that prevent the administration from processing new DACA applications. Passing the DREAM Act or otherwise legislating permanent residency for the DREAMers is a critical — and reasonable — next step. After all, DACA, which only applies to immigrants who arrived as children and not to their parents, is not nearly as extensive as the 1986 amnesty policy.

As it stands, DACA is an executive action and not a piece legislation, so those who benefit from it will always be vulnerable to the whims of our next chief executive.

Given the historical evidence, there’s a strong case to be made that providing legal status to immigrants who came to the United States as children not only is the right thing to do, but economically sound. The DREAMers have a lot to give to our economy. By continuing to block their path, Congress has made an economically short-sighted — and costly — mistake.

Ran Abramitzky is a professor of economics at Stanford University. Leah Boustan is a professor of economics at Princeton University. They are the authors of “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success.”