A top House Republican sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Friday, ordering him to stop an Obama administration executive action that creates a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said his panel has discovered that more than 4,000 people have been granted a path to citizenship under the Obama Administration’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. The policy allows people who arrived here illegally as children to receive work permits and gain access to some federal benefits.
According to Goodlatte, DHS is allowing thousands of DACA participants to receive a legal status known as “advance parole.” Once they win advance-parole status, Goodlatte said, illegal immigrants can gain lawful permanent resident status and eventually U.S. citizenship.
Goodlatte said the policy conflicts with Obama’s promise that the DACA program is “not a path to citizenship.”
“No agency,” he told Johnson, “should take action in direct conflict with that statement.”
Goodlatte said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services informed the Judiciary Committee that out of 4,566 cases requesting advance parole, 566 were denied.
“That is an advance parole rate of 88 percent,” Goodlatte wrote.
The DACA program is widely supported by Democrats as well as many Republicans who believe people who arrived here as children and who were raised in the United States should be granted the ability to remain here under certain circumstances.
But Obama angered even GOP supporters by implementing the program through executive action, rather than allowing Congress to legislate.
Republicans are trying to block further implementation of DACA by defunding it in a Homeland Security spending bill. Democrats have blocked the bill in the Senate.
