In my opinion, if they were brought here by their parents at a very young age, as this wasn’t their choice, and if since and only if since they have arrived, they have learned to speak fluent English, have graduated from HS and or have obtained a college degree, and are gainfully employed and are paying taxes and have no criminal record what so ever, I’m fine with them obtaining permanent status but only if they apply and pass for citizenship including a US history test and only if they swear allegiance to the USA, say within the next 4 years. If they can’t meet those requirements, I would say they should be deported back to their home country.
To be honest, I’m not 100% sure my father’s mother, my grandmother didn’t come here from Norway illegally in the 1920’s.
From what I understand, just days before she gave birth to my father in 1920, her husband died in an accident. Only a few months before that, their daughter died at about 2 1/2 years old, possibly a victim of the Spanish Flu or something similar. She only about 20 years old at the time and quite feisty and independent minded, and she didn’t want to live her life under her parent’s roof as the grieving widow for the rest of her life nor be married off to a much older man as her family was trying to arrange.
So she boarded a ship to the US, but from what I understand, she used the ticket of her cousin who was going to visit relatives in the US but changed her mind, so it didn’t sound to as if this was a planned trip and was a very sudden decision on her part. My grandmother upon arriving got work as a domestic and eventually a job as a shop clerk.
She met and married a man from her same town in Norway but they could never have met nor been married back in the old country since he was of a lower social class than she was.
After they were married and settled, some 6 years later she traveled back to Norway to retrieve my father and bring him to the US when he was about 6 or 7 years old.
My father became very Americanized and served in WWII in the SPT while not yet a naturalized citizen. He had applied at age 18 but the war delayed it and he didn’t become naturalized until after my brother was born in 1948.
ETA - I don't think my grandmother and her 2nd husband got their US citizenship until the same time or shortly after my father got his.
