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The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ( DACA ) met this Sunday 15 August nine years of its implementation and there are still more than 55, 000 ‘dreamers’ who do not have that protection and are at risk of deportation.
The action of the program is again limited in scope following a federal court decision and with hundreds of thousands of youth waiting for the President’s Administration to Joe Biden or Congress act.
In these nine years, the immigration benefit has represented for hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth the opportunity to have a work permit, and avoid deportation.
The numbers of protected immigrants have reached around 800, 000 . Many of these young people have managed to find ways to become permanently legal, and few are those who have lost their status.
As of March 2021, some 616. 030 “dreamers”, as those covered by DACA are known, had the benefit active, according to data from the Citizenship and Immigration Service ( USCIS ) .
First time protection
More of 50, 000 undocumented persons were waiting in March for the amparo to be approved for the first time after more than three years of blockades by the Administration of the now former president Donald Trump (2012 – 2021), what what iso end profit in September 2017.
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The hopes of finally obtaining an amparo were dashed again when Judge Andrew Hanen, of the Southern District of Texas, ordered the Government to suspend the granting of new immigration protections considering that DACA is illegal and that the current former president Barack Obama (2009 – 2017) exceeded his authority when you created the program in 2012.
However, the magistrate did allow the renewal of the existing amparos, citing the years of validity of the program.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas and eight other Republican states that since 2018 alleged that the program was unconstitutional and did not comply with the Administrative Process Act (APA)at the time of its creation.
It was a low blow, the second we received, “Beatriz, an undocumented mother living in Arizona, told Efe who had been waiting since December for the Government to approve the application for DACA of his son Alberto, of 18 years.
Both dreamers and activists have been waiting for the Executive and Congress to act.
Biden Management Effort
This week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in charge of DACA, submitted to the Federal Register a rulemaking notice (NPRM) under the title “Preserving and Strengthening Deferred Action for arrived in childhood. ”
The notice warns that the 18 January 2021, the President Biden signed a memorandum requiring that DHS, in consultation with the attorney general, take all appropriate steps to preserve and strengthen DACA in accordance with applicable law, whereby DHS “intends to participate in the development of notice rules and comments. ”
Until the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, the public will not be able to know the details of the NPRM, but fractions of both Political extremes are awaiting the passage of the Biden Government to save the amparo, signed by Obama in June of 2012 and that it began to receive applications in August of that year.
The new step taken by the Democratic Administration must in some way respond to the judgment presented by Hanen, or there is a risk of extending the legal battle.
Meanwhile, the Capitol has analyzed since March various bills that would give permanent residence and a subsequent path to citizenship to dreamers and those protected by the Temporary Protected Status (TPS), undocumented peasants and other irregular workers and considered “essential” as a result of the pandemic.
But their future is more than uncertain because they do not finish giving the accounts and meeting the al less 15 votes Republicans needed to carry out any of the three measures in the Senate, two of which have already been approved with bipartisan support in the House of Representatives.
A path to citizenship
Hopes are currently pinned on Biden’s $ 3.5 trillion social spending plan, which Democrats want to pass without relying on the Republican Party through the reconciliation process, and which includes a budget to legalize a sector of the undocumented, where the dreamers will surely be included.
The first step in this direction was taken this week when Democrats approved by 51 votes the resolution that allows the process to start. 1249826203 No Republican voted in favor of the plan
.Greisa Martínez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, one of the largest organizations defending dreamers, said in a statement that “we cannot continue to fall into the bad faith and racist rhetoric of the Republicans.”
“We must remind the Democrats that they have everything political power and the moral obligation to provide a complete path to citizenship ”, he stated.
“This year, we must deliver citizenship to millions of undocumented Americans. There are no excuses! ”, Concluded Martínez, who is also co-president of the We Are Home campaign, which brings together dozens of organizations that are fighting for the legalization of the undocumented.