Plecker's racial policies continue to cause problems for the descendants of what are now sometimes called the First Virginians. Members of eight Virginia-recognized tribes struggle to achieve federal recognition because they cannot prove their continuity of heritage through historic documentation, as federal laws require. First encountering European Americans during the colonial period, the tribes mostly had treaties with the King of England rather than with the United States government. Plecker's policies destroyed and altered records that individuals and families now need in order to prove their cultural continuity as Indians. In 2007, the House of Representatives passed a law to recognize the Virginia tribes at the Federal level. In January 2018, the Senate passed the bill and the president signed it into law.