Legal Texas immigrants at risk of deportation if Senate doesn't pass bill

Imagine calling a place home for your entire life, then having to make the decision to leave it behind because of a broken immigration system.

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Imagine calling a place home for your entire life, then having to make the decision to leave it behind because of the immigration system.

That's the reality for Athulya Rajakumar, a long-time Texas resident who is making tentative plans to self-deport back to India—where she was born— right before the Christmas holiday.

According to Improve the Dream, an immigration nonprofit, there are roughly 250,000 documented dreamers in the United States. Texas has about 10,000. These are people who were brought to the U.S. legally, as a dependent on their parents' work visa.

By the time a dependent turns 21 though, they're no longer eligible to receive benefits from their parents' visas.

You may have heard of undocumented dreamers who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and who are allowed to stay in the U.S. as DACA recipients.

On the contrary, documented dreamers, who were brought here legally don't qualify for DACA, and therefore aren't offered the same protections.

The looming date of turning 21 for documented dreamers isn't a surprise. They've always known they needed to figure out a path to long-term U.S. citizenship. However, the problem is the country's immigration system is so backlogged, documented dreamers eventually age out of the system without finding an immediate solution to stay in America.

Negotiations in the Senate are ongoing for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which has to pass by the end of the year. Advocates are hoping a provision is passed that allows documented dreamers to continue pursuing their permanent path to U.S. Citizenship as they have their entire lives.

This story will be updated by reporter Jala Washington.