Tag: immigration

How DACA Will End: A Timeline of Expiration

Donald Trump has said he wants to cancel President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and has implied he would do it on his first day in office. DACA allows young immigrants—known as Dreamers—who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children to live and work here temporarily

Trump recently softened his tone, saying he would try to “work something out” with Dreamers. But DACA probably won’t disappear overnight when Trump assumes office on January 20th in any case. Rather, it will slowly wind down as the immigrants’ temporary work permits expire. Here’s why and how that will happen.

How DACA operates

There are essentially three parts of DACA, which are detailed in a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum from Secretary Janet Napolitano. The first part is the deprioritization of removal of non-criminal unauthorized immigrants. Currently, the department relies on detailed priorities when deciding whether to remove a specific person. The DACA memo tells DHS agents to prevent Dreamers that they encounter “from being placed into removal proceedings or removed from the United States.”

The second part of DACA essentially formalizes that decision not remove them. DACA recipients apply for and are issued a Notice of Action I-797 form (below) stating that removal action against them has been “deferred” for two years. Their information is entered into a database, and if it is checked against immigration databases, they are shown as lawfully present in the United States during that time. More than 800,000 young immigrants have enrolled in DACA and received such a letter.

Figure 1: DACA Form I-797 Notice of Action

Source: Imgur

Finally, this receipt of deferred action authorizes the immigrants to request an employment authorization document (EAD) similar to the one below, which is also valid for two years. Under current law, any person in the United States—legally or illegally—can legally seek employment, but it is illegal for an employer to employ a noncitizen who is not authorized to work. Thus, an EAD is really about authorizing employers to make a hire, not about authorizing the DACA recipient to seek a job.*

Trump’s Ban on Immigration from Certain Countries Is Illegal

Angelo A. Paparelli contributed to this post. 

This week last year, Donald Trump proposed prohibiting all Muslim immigration to the United States. He altered the proposal this year to specify “suspending immigration from nations tied to Islamic terror.” He told CNN that this was actually intended as an expansion of the Muslim ban. Last week, he said, “People are pouring in from regions of the Middle East,” but that he would “stop that dead, cold flat.” He has also made clear that this would be one of the actions that he takes as president during his first day in office. This promise implies that he has the power to do so under current law, but that is not the case. It is illegal to discriminate against immigrants based on their national origin.  

Even while delegating to the president broad powers to exclude immigrants, Congress also expressly forbade banning immigrants based on their race or national origin. President Trump will almost certainly run into legal difficulties if he attempts to carry out his promise.

Text of the law bans discrimination based on national origin

At first blush, it would seem that the president can ban people based on their nationality or country of residence. The Supreme Court has granted Congress extensive leeway under the plenary power doctrine to limit immigration based on criteria—such as race or national origin—that would be considered unconstitutional in other contexts, and proponents of Trump’s plan claim that Congress authorized such bans by pointing to a provision of section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the law that controls most U.S. immigration policies:


This seems to hand unequivocal authority to the executive branch to determine who it may admit to the United States. However, another section of the law clearly bans discrimination against certain classes. Section 202(a)(1)(A) of the INA states that except in cases specified by Congress in section 101(a)(27):


While section 212 grants the president a general power to exclude certain immigrants, section 202 limits this power. Note that this section does not prevent discrimination based on religious affiliation, political belief, or ideology, but Trump’s new policy would run afoul of at least one if not all three of those last three restrictions—nationality, place of birth, or place of residence—depending on how it was applied. “Place” of birth is actually a broader restriction than nationality, meaning that even if Trump’s ban applied to subnational or regional levels, it would still be illegal.

Section 202 does not protect all types of people who wish to come here from discrimination based on national origin. It is limited only to immigrants or so-called green card holders. Legally, immigrants are foreigners who enter on visas granting legal permanent residency in the United States as well as noncitizens whom the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has adjusted their status to that of a permanent resident. The most common types of immigrants are immediate relatives of U.S. citizens—parents, spouses, and their minor children—who have no numerical limit. Other types include employees sponsored by U.S. businesses, adult children of U.S. citizens, their siblings, and immediate relatives of legal permanent residents. Refugees and asylees who have already entered the United States and held status for a year are eligible for immigrant visas, making discrimination against them at that stage also illegal.

Refugees outside of the United States, however, could still be excluded based on nationality before they enter as they do not enter on an immigrant visa. Obviously all nonimmigrants—guest workers, tourists, and other temporary visitors—could conceivably be subject to this discriminatory policy. It could also apply to those who are claiming asylum in the United States, but at the same time, the law prohibits deporting people who face a likelihood of persecution in their home country, which could leave such people in limbo.

More Proof Hispanics Aren’t “Socialists”

Whenever I write about Hispanic immigration to the United States, I am greeted with some variation of the “they’re all socialists” line. These commenters typically point to the fact that a majority of Hispanics vote for Democrats. Yet as Alex Nowrasteh has written, the Republican Party’s antagonism toward Hispanics plays an important role in that outcome. The reality is that Hispanics disproportionately backed the libertarian presidential candidate this election and, as I have described before, are America’s most libertarian major ethnic group on a variety of specific issues. Now, thanks to Donald Trump’s recent actions, we have more evidence for this fact.

The Economist magazine teamed up with the survey outfit YouGov to ask Americans how they felt about trade, tariffs, subsidies, and free markets following President-elect Trump’s recent decision to intervene to prevent Carrier from relocating production to Mexico. Support for the deal should be a telling indicator of a person’s views on capitalism, as it clearly shows contempt for the market system and free trade. As Vice President-elect Mike Pence told The New York Times, he supported the deal because “the free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing.”

The first question in the poll on the issue asked respondents whether they agreed with Pence’s statement, but did not reveal its origin to avoid allowing partisanship to impact the responses. Figure 1 provides the breakdown of the responses by ethnicity. As it shows, Hispanics were the least likely to agree with Pence’s statement—a full twenty percentage points less likely. In case you think that this result might still be pure partisanship, barely half of Hispanics had even heard anything about the Carrier deal, let alone the Pence remark.

A Wall Is an Impractical, Expensive, and Ineffective Border Plan


Public Support for a Fence or Wall


The Wall Trump Has Proposed


Image 1: Size of Proposed Trump Wall

Source: Washington Post

Delete NSEERS Before Trump Takes Office





We Know Trump Supporters Would Back Immigrant Legalization If He Did





Nativists Created Our Immigration Problems—They Can’t Fix Them


Creating the Problem






Sources: Border Patrol; INS
