Campaign Action
An Indiana Professional Licensing Agency application form change last year “effectively locked out” Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients from obtaining professional licenses in dozens of occupations ranging from nursing to cosmetology. Without an immediate fix, current licensees wouldn’t have been able to renew, and those still in training and set on applying soon would have been shut out all together. Earlier this week, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed legislation allowing them to once again apply and renew:
Holcomb defended the change to the application forms, arguing that it was necessary to comply with a 2011 state immigration law. But he also supported legislative efforts to remove the licensing barrier.
“I support removing impediments in state law that keep Indiana’s DACA recipients from skilling up and going to work," he said in a statement Wednesday after signing the legislation into law.
Indiana is home to about 9,000 DACA recipients, including University of Indianapolis senior Perla Alamillo. The 23-year-old nursing student had feared that the application form change would have meant an end to her career dreams. “It’s just really great," she said about the legislation. "It was really weighing on me because I’ve done all this work for four years and I thought my whole future was going to change and I was going to have to move away from my family."
Not all states, however, allow DACA recipients to apply for certain professional licenses, so when the Republican-led Congress is refusing to pass legislation to put undocumented youth on a path to citizenship, it’s incumbent on localities and states to do all they can to protect these young people. Bipartisan legislators from Indiana did it, and if legislators at the federal level won’t budge from their partisanship to act, this is the year to bring in new ones who will.