https://ift.tt/aGEsP43 Biden administration has revised a program that protected from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, in hopes of satisfying one of the arguments made by Republican-led states in federal courts that the program was not created properly.
Biden officials issued the new version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, in late August, and it takes effect Monday. It went through a period of public comments as part of a formal rulemaking process to increase its odds of surviving an ongoing legal battle.
Those supporting the program say the new rule does not change anything from the 2012 memo issued under the Obama administration that created DACA. The program’s future still lies in the hands of the courts after Monday, when DACA officially becomes a federal regulation.
“Through the codifying of DACA, the government tried to really resolve all that, [but] it doesn’t take care of the issue of the other arguments that the states are making, which is that they’re losing money,” Felix Villalobos, affirmative services unit director at RAICES, a nonprofit immigrant-rights group, told VOA.
In 2018, Texas and other Republican-led states sued the federal government, arguing that DACA had harmed states financially because they were spending resources on education, health care and other services on undocumented immigrants, who were allowed to remain in the country illegally.
They also argued that only Congress has the authority to grant immigration benefits.
Yet, on October 20, a coalition of dozens of influential corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, sent a letter to Republicans and Democrats in Congress urging a bipartisan solution for the almost 600,000 immigrants who are enrolled in DACA.
They said ending the program or not having a permanent solution for DACA recipients would harm communities and businesses that would lose people who have become productive members of the U.S. economy.