One of them is Jason Hong, who came to the United States with his parents when he was 10 years old to live in New Jersey, Delaware, and New York for 18 years. He moved to Spain in 2019 in search for better opportunities, ABC Channel 7 News reported.
In an interview, Mr. Hong explained that he had hopes of obtaining temporary legal residency status after being spared deportation as a DACA recipient, but after years of not being able to travel to visit his family in South Korea and not having access to healthcare, he decided to leave the United States.
After graduating from business school in Madrid, Spain, Mr. Hong received a work visa and now runs two startup businesses and lives the life of a successful businessman. He co-founded and runs Onward, a non-profit organization that aims to help Dreamers with their future with two other young people who are in situation as him.
“Immigrants create jobs,” says Mr. Hong, who once had the “American dream” of studying to get into a good college, then to earn a professional job. “I want to be an entrepreneur who can create a company with my own ideas and hopefully create jobs for others.”
As more undocumented immigrants like Hong leave the country, the number of undocumented people in the U.S. is decreasing.
According to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), about 2 million undocumented people have left the United States in the past few years, either to return to their home countries or to move to other countries. In 2021, CMS estimated the undocumented population in the U.S. at 10.2 million.
The largest declines were among those from Poland, the Philippines, Peru, South Korea, and Uruguay. Statistics show that from 2010 to 2020, 30 percent of undocumented immigrants from these countries, including those from South Korea, either returned to their home countries or moved to other countries.
“At one point, the undocumented population was as high as 12 million people, but now the population is rapidly decreasing as people voluntarily leave the United States,” said Robert Warren, a senior researcher. “They believed that working hard would resolve the issue with their immigration status, but as time goes on, they’re choosing a more stable path in life.”
BY NICOLE CHANG [chang.nicole@koreadaily.com]
