DAPA AND EXPANDED DACA ON ORAL ARGUMENT AT THE SUPREME COURT

On April 18, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a preliminary injunction suit brought by 26 states (led by Texas) against the Obama administration's 2014 DAPA and expanded DACA initiatives. These initiatives would offer approximately 4 out of 11 million unauthorized immigrants temporary relief from removal (protection from deportation) as well as temporary eligibility for employment authorization documents. More specifically, DAPA could benefit about 3.7 million parents of U.S. citizens and residents, while expanded DACA could benefit about 300,000 individuals who arrived in the U.S. as children -- in addition to the 1.2 million already eligible under the current DACA program.

Texas does not contest the President's claim that Congress has failed to allocate enough resources to deport 11 million people. Nor does it claim that the President, with record annual deportation numbers (around 400,000) achieved under his watch, has failed to properly use or exhaust allocated immigration enforcement resources. There is no challenge to the President's authority to re-organize those resources by prioritizing some immigration law violators over others (for example, serious criminals over DAPA-eligible violators), so that designated low-priority violators can be made officially immune from removal for a limited period of time (three years under the proposed initiatives).

Texas' core challenge to DAPA and expanded DACA is narrower: it claims that these initiatives would create, without Congress' authorization, brand new categories of "lawful status," as demonstrated by the issuance of employment authorization documents.

GPI LAW IN THE NEWS

GPI Law attorney Amien Kacou's NOLO Q&A on using DACA advance parole to allow for adjustment of status in cases of illegal entry was quoted in a February 16 Epoch Times article.  You can read the article here.

2013 IMMIGRATION REFORM = DREAM + STEM - DV?

The prospect of US immigration reform in 2013 is becoming increasingly clear for at least two categories of aspiring immigrants: DREAMers (a somewhat larger group than current DACA beneficiaries--as described in my last post--including mostly unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the US as minors, often from Latin America) and STEMs (a smaller group including foreign students--often from Asia--who graduate from US universities with advanced degrees in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Although, lately, DREAMers have received more news coverage (and understandably so, considering their numbers, their activism and the compelling "humanitarian" dimension of their story), current government debates suggest that STEMs stand to benefit from equal (if not stronger) bipartisan support in gaining (perhaps even faster) access to permanent residence visas. For example, last September, House Republicans and Senate Democrats introduced very similar bills offering new green cards to 55,000 STEMs per year.

This consensus is consistent with the fact that, as the US Department of Labor has acknowledged, the US faces a serious education and workforce deficit in STEM fields, with dire consequences for global competitiveness and growth, whereas, for instance, according to the Kaufman Foundation of Entrepreneurship, the proportion of new Silicon Valley firms that had at least one key founder who was foreign-born declined from an incredibly high 52% between 1995 and 2005 to a still very high 43.9% between 2006 and 2012 (24.3% for engineering and technology firms in the country at large).

However, the Republican STEM bill, which passed the House last week (quickly following President Obama's re-election with a large share of the Hispanic vote), also included a trade-off in the form of provisions eliminating the Diversity Visa (DV) program--the reason for which Senate Democrats rejected it this week. The DV program, an annual lottery administered by the State Department, provides about 50,000 permanent residence visas to citizens of countries with traditionally low immigration to the US--especially from Africa.

DEFERRED ACTION FOR CHILDHOOD ARRIVALS (DACA): Two Months In

On August 15, 2012, USCIS (the immigration services branch of DHS) officially began processing requests for deferred removal action under the Obama administration's most recent--and, so far, most significant--prosecutorial discretion and/or humanitarian immigration relief initiative: DACA. (On a minor note: while the administration has convincingly defended the legality of the program on the basis of the principle of prosecutorial discretion, it is interesting to point out that the USCIS website currently categorizes it under the humanitarian label--which normally applies to cases such as asylum, Temporary Protected Status, humanitarian parole, etc.).

Under the new policy, individuals currently in the United States may obtain every two-year a temporary work permit and (basically) a temporary promise from the federal government that they will not be placed in removal proceedings for being present in the country without legal status, if: they arrived before turning 16; they have "continuously resided" in the country since June 15, 2007; they were under 31 and were physically present in the country illegally on June 15, 2012; they have finished high school, have gotten a GED or have been honorably discharged from the military; and they have no significant criminal record and do not threaten national security or public safety. (For details, see here.)

Between 1.2 and 1.7 million individuals (about 70% of whom are from Mexico, and 740,000 of whom may have been employed illegally) are expected to meet these criteria--primarily in California, Texas, Florida and New York/New Jersey. (With reference to the DREAM Act proposal, let's call them "quasi-DREAMers.")

According to the New York Times, as of September, USCIS wouldn't "say how many people had applied, but rough estimates put it at about 150,000 [...], with a fraction having won deferrals." And, as of September 28, that "fraction" stood at only 29 agency-confirmed approvals (for the total number of requests).