Illegal immigration: Who’s applying for Obama’s ‘DREAM Act’ deferrals?

The Christian Science Monitor, 11/20/2012

About one-quarter of the young undocumented immigrants eligible for the two-year deportation deferral established by President Obama have applied since the program started Aug. 15.

Statistics released last week by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) gave the fullest portrait yet of who is applying, and they suggested that enthusiasm for the program was not dampened by the uncertainty caused by presidential election.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney had waffled on how he would handle the program, leading some immigration advocates to wonder if applicants might be wary of starting the process until the election was decided. But the data show the election had little effect on the process.

Read more…

Opportunity for Latinos [Op-ed, in Spanish]

Andrew Selee, Op-ed, Reforma, 11/11/2012

The re-election of Barack Obama opens the possibility of repositioning the migration agenda in the bilateral relationship

President Barack Obama won the election with an absolute majority and a margin in almost all of the battleground states. His re-election comes with a divided Congress, about the same in composition as before, but with a clear mandate to deal with economic and fiscal issues facing the nation.

Read more…

The Arizonification of America [Op-Ed]

The New York Times, 10/16/2015

Appearing on behalf of the former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, whose surging campaign to become the first Latino Senator in Arizona now leads in the latest polls, Clinton drew some of his biggest cheers for his support of the DREAM Act merely by calling it the “right thing to do.”

Welcome to the Arizona showdown.

Read more…

Romney Won’t Revoke Immigrant Work Visas Under Obama’s Temporary Plan

Fox News Latino, 10/2/12

Mitt Romney

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he would honor temporary  work permits for young undocumented immigrants who were allowed to stay in the  U.S. because of President Barack Obama’s new temporary policy of so-called  “deferred action.”In an interview appearing in Tuesday’s Denver Post, Romney said that people  who are able to earn the two-year visas to stay and work wouldn’t see them  revoked under his administration. However, Romney did not say whether or not he  would undo Obama’s plan for future applicants.

Read more…

Young illegal immigrants may get driver’s licenses

USA Today, 9/15/12

The new immigration policy has brought to the forefront the long-running and bitter debate over whether illegal immigrants should have access to driver’s licenses. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that each state could determine whether to issue licenses or extend other benefits to young immigrants who qualify for the deferred status.

Some states, such as Oregon and Georgia, have announced that they will grant driving privileges to those eligible for the new program. Others, such as Arizona and Mississippi, have vowed to deny them.

California legislators this month approved a bill that would allow an estimated 450,000 eligible young immigrants in the state to use the federal work permits at the Department of Motor Vehicles as proof of lawful presence in the country. The bill is now headed to the governor.

Read More…

Quick Start to Program Offering Immigrants a Reprieve

The New York Times, 9/11/12

One month after the Obama administration started a program to suspend deportations of young illegal immigrants, more than 72,000 of them have applied for the temporary reprieve, senior immigration officials said on Tuesday, and this week the first approvals have been granted…

The immigrants requesting two-year deportation deferrals do not reach the high estimates of 250,000 that officials had said they were prepared to handle in the first month of the program, which is President Obama’s most significant immigration initiative.

But at the current rate, at least 200,000 young immigrants could have applications in the pipeline by the time of the presidential election on Nov. 6, and many thousands will probably have received deferrals and the work permits that go along with them. Officials originally predicted that it could take several months for the immigration agency, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, to issue the first deferrals.

Read More…

 

 

U.S., Mexican Leaders Say the Old PRI is Gone

The Texas Tribune, 9/4/12

The return to power of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, will not be accompanied by the corruption that used to plague the party, says Arturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., and former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.

At a panel hosted Tuesday by Richardson and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center, Sarukhan wouldn’t say whether he’d stay in his post if President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto asked him. But he said the PRI and the Mexican population have shifted, and that the country’s maturing democracy would not allow anyone to “turn back the clock.”

Read More…

Kris Kobach, informal Romney adviser, files immigration lawsuit

Politico, 8/23/12

An informal adviser to Mitt Romney is representing 10 federal employees in a  lawsuit aimed at undoing President Barack Obama’s June immigration  directive.

Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach is representing U.S. Immigration and  Customs Enforcement officials who believe that Obama’s immigration action  requires them to break federal law. The suit [pdf], which names Secretary of Homeland Security Janet  Napolitano and ICE Director John Morton as defendants, was filed Thursday  afternoon in a Dallas federal court.

“The Directive is an extension of the DREAM Act, which was  rejected by Congress, and aims to grant an amnesty to 1.7 million illegal  aliens. It violates federal immigration laws that require certain aliens to be  placed in removal proceedings,” Kobach said in a statement.

Read more…

Young Illegal Immigrants Seek To Avoid Deportation

NPR, 8/15/12

Young people brought to the U.S. illegally began applying for a deportation deferral and a two-year work permit on Wednesday. It’s the boldest immigration program yet by the Obama administration — putting into effect elements of the so-called DREAM Act even though it has not passed Congress…

The program is aimed at undocumented young people in school, those who’ve graduated and those who served in the military. Anyone with a criminal record is barred from applying. There’s a $465 fee, which is supposed to pay for the program, and there’s a lot of paperwork.

Read More…

Young Immigrants, in America Illegally, Line Up for Reprieve

The New York Times, 8/13/12

With their expectations soaring, young illegal immigrants across the country are preparing to apply for a temporary reprieve from deportation that the Obama administration is offering. For the first time, as many as 1.7 million of them could be allowed to work legally and live openly in this country without fear of being expelled.

The program is President Obama’s most ambitious immigrationinitiative by far, a sweeping exercise of executive authority after Congress failed to pass the Dream Act, legislation he supported that would have given legal status to the young immigrants. It is a major bid by Mr. Obama to win back Latino voters who were souring on him after his administration deported nearly 1.2 million immigrants, most of them Latinos, in the last three years.

The initiative to defer deportations, which Mr. Obama announced in June, officially starts on Wednesday, when a federal immigration agency will begin accepting requests.

Read More…