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

Eun Suk Hong dreamed of attending an Ivy League school. It was the natural evolution for a child brought by his mother at age 10 to the U.S. from South Korea with his father’s words ringing in his ear: “We gave you this opportunity. Study hard. Listen to your mother.”

But no matter how hard Mr. Hong worked or studied, his immigration status in the U.S. was always in question. And when Donald Trump took power four years ago that nagging worry turned to near panic. He still remembers the day in September 2017, two years after he got a job in finance in New York, that the U.S. announced it would rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era reprieve for millions of unauthorized immigrants like Mr. Hong who arrived in the U.S. as children.

“I was at work. I felt so cold. My hands were shaking,” he says. “I realized, oh my God, whatever I thought I had, it can be taken away, and it just was.”

So Mr. Hong did what his family had done, all those years ago: He looked for opportunities in another country, even though he knew that by leaving the U.S., he would be barred from re-entering the only country he knew. He applied, and got accepted to a high-ranked business school in Spain. “And I looked at my life in the States, which is filled with uncertainty ... [in] a country that doesn’t want me.”

When he left for Spain in 2019, Mr. Hong became one of the so-called Dreamers who have voluntarily left the U.S. after seeing immigration reform wither on the vine. The number who have left, either to move home or to another country, isn’t tracked; estimates show that the overall unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. declined by around 1 million from 2010 to 2018. 

And while President Biden has sounded a new tone, reversing some of Mr. Trump’s most hard-line policies for immigrants in his first week in office, many Dreamers who have found opportunity elsewhere won’t be moving back anytime soon, pushing back against an enduring U.S. idea of freedom coupled to opportunity, one encapsulated in the “American Dream.”

“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?’”

Divisive politics

Mr. Biden has already granted protection to DACA recipients by preserving the program that President Trump attempted to rescind in 2017, triggering a protracted legal battle that he eventually lost. Government data shows that as of Sept. 30, there were 640,760 individuals, with an average age of 26, who were recipients of DACA, making them a small subset of the larger number of Dreamers. 

Mr. Biden has also sent legislation to Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for the nearly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Dreamers would be fast-tracked under Mr. Biden’s proposal, which would be the most expansive overhaul of immigration law in decades. On Tuesday, his administration announced further measures, including a task force to reunite family members separated at the border under his predecessor.

Still, not lost on many Dreamers who’ve left the U.S. is that polarized immigration politics preceded the Trump administration. The DREAM Act for immigrant minors was first introduced nearly 20 years ago, only to flounder in Congress, leading Mr. Obama to create DACA in 2012 as a temporary reprieve. And the politics of immigration reform remains just as divisive and dysfunctional, though there is broad public support for legalizing the status of Dreamers.

“Life Outside the U.S.”

Many Dreamers talk about growing up as American kids, only to realize when they tried to get summer jobs or drivers’ licenses, apply to college or start their careers, how constrained they were. When they found out about their status, they finally understood their parents’ fear of police or skittishness while driving. They talk about feeling trapped, suffocated, and ashamed of who they were.

Katharine Gin, who works with undocumented youth in the San Francisco area, recently helped launch a video project called “Life Outside the U.S.” to help them open themselves to the possibilities of leaving.  

“There are no role models for them. 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, executive director of Immigrants Rising, a nonprofit.

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.”

That’s easier said or desired than done, says Rudolf Kischer, an immigration attorney in Vancouver. Canada is a logical destination because of proximity and language, and he says he has fielded more calls from Dreamers in recent years. But many are dissuaded by Canada’s immigration system, which places a high bar, including educational achievements, for most applicants.

“It’s very difficult to do and it’s risky for them to do,” he says, noting that there’s no simple way back to the U.S. if they are accepted.

A one-way street

Indeed, one of the most excruciating decisions that Dreamers face is leaving behind family and immigrant parents who sacrificed everything to get their children to America. Any adult who has lived in the U.S. illegally is usually barred from entering the country for between three and 10 years, subject to waivers.

Ms. Portocarrero left the U.S. in 2011. She talks about the 20-hour days her mother put in: working the morning as a cashier, the afternoon as a nanny, and the evening delivering newspapers in California’s Bay Area.

But after graduating from university, Ms. Portocarrero says she could only take unpaid internships because DACA status didn’t yet exist. And when one of those organizations tried to offer her a paid position and she had to refuse, she knew she had to leave. “That’s what my mom taught me, that I could succeed anywhere,” says Ms. Portocarrero, who works in Vancouver as a data analyst. “I didn’t need to be in the U.S. to fulfill my dreams.”

The two weren’t able to see one another for nine years, until her mom moved back to Peru. 

Mr. Hong didn’t immediately accept the business school offer in Spain, in part because of his mother’s sacrifice for him and her reluctance to see him go. He deferred the acceptance, and worked with a nonprofit to lobby on Capitol Hill for a reentry waiver for unauthorized immigrants who leave to study. Nothing changed. So he got a student visa and moved to Madrid. 

Today Mr. Hong is taking a dual master’s degree while launching two startups. Still, he hasn’t given up on his American Dream. One of his startups is based in Miami with a U.S. partner. He is barred from re-entering, but he is applying for a waiver, and hopes the Biden administration will change the rules for Dreamers, and not just because he wants to do business.

“I want the U.S. to want to have me back,” he says. “I want to show an immigrant is not taking a job away from you. Actually an immigrant can create a job for you.”