Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court gave a split 4-4 vote regarding President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans initiative and his expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Taken together, these executive orders aim to give some 5 million undocumented workers temporary work permits and an effective shield from deportation. But the Supreme Court’s vote on Texas v. United States effectively halts these programs.
The original DACA program introduced by the president in 2012, however, remains more or less unaffected by the Supreme Court’s decision. Under that program, roughly 800,000 individuals are eligible to obtain work permits and remain in the country without risk of deportation.
In order to be eligible for the original DACA program, an individual must have (among other things) entered the U.S. before turning 16 years of age, have continuously resided in the U.S. since mid-2007, and importantly, have had no lawful immigration status as of June 15th, 2012. The expanded DACA program would have relaxed some of these rules, but still would have required that applicants have no lawful status at a particular date.
Similarly, the DAPA program requires that applicants be parents of children who are citizens or permanent residents, have resided continuously in the U.S. since the beginning of 2010, and have had no lawful immigration status on Nov. 20, 2014.
DACA and DAPA, then, offer no benefits to foreigners staying in the country legally. In effect, both these initiatives penalize people for following immigration law.
Consider the following scenario. Suppose that a family moved to the U.S. in 2007, because one of the parents had a student or work visa. They brought with them a child, Claudia, who lawfully entered and stayed in the country as a dependent. Additionally, the parents had another child, Alice, while in the U.S. — so Alice is a U.S. citizen. However, now, in 2016, the parents’ visas have run out, and they have to return home by law.
DACA would offer Claudia no means to stay and work in the country. Why? Because she had been in legal status all along — and thus would not meet the requirement of not having lawful immigration status as of mid-2012.
Similarly, DAPA would provide the parents with no means to stay in the country, even if one of their children, Alice, is a U.S. citizen. They too, were lawfully present as of Nov. 20, 2014, and thus would not meet the crucial DAPA requirement.
The scenario above is not a farfetched one. Often, it can take an extremely long time for lawfully entering immigrants to receive permanent residence, and many have to leave after a few years. Writing for Vox last year, William Han described how even after living in the U.S. for 15 years, he had no means of remaining — though he desperately wanted to do so. This is quite common — individuals coming as students, and particularly people born in China and India, often have to wait more than a decade to become U.S. permanent residents, or “green card” holders.
When the president introduced DACA in 2012, he remarked, “These are young people who study in our schools, they play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. … Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’ve done everything right your entire life — studied hard, worked hard, maybe even graduated at the top of your class — only to suddenly face the threat of deportation to a country that you know nothing about, with a language that you may not even speak.”
If this indeed is the president’s motive behind the DACA initiative, why not protect someone like Claudia? The majority of children in her shoes would presumably fit the president’s description as well. In fact, according to a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, immigrants with legal status are often more integrated into American society than those without.
To be consistent, the president ought to expand his programs to cover legally present immigrants. Else, he will be continuing to punish people for abiding by immigration law.
Hrishikesh Joshi is a PhD candidate at Princeton University. Follow him on Twitter @RoundSqrCupola. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
