Trump ends DACA: All you need to know about it and how Indians are impacted

Move likely to impact 800,000 undocumented workers, including more than 20,000 Indian-Americans

 

With President Donald Trump’s reversal of an Obama-era executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), worst fears of young immigrants seem to be coming true.
The historic move is likely to impact 800,000 undocumented workers, including more than 20,000 Indian-Americans who trusted the US government with their fingerprints and other personal information when they applied for DACA.

Most of the immigrants protected by DACA, dubbed 'Dreamers', came from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

What is DACA?

DACA The DACA programme granted the undocumented youth temporary reprieve from deportation and the ability to legally apply for a job or get admission to educational institutions.
The programme grants them a two-year reprieve that can be extended by issuing them identity papers like driver’s licences, work permit and a social security number.

However, DACA does not provide beneficiaries legal residency in US.

How could one enrol under the programme?

An immigrant was required to be at 15 years of age when applying for DACA. They were to submit proof that they were brought to the US before they turned 16 and were under 31 when the programme was launched.

The application cost was nearly $500 and permits needed to be renewed every two years. The application and renewal process took several weeks.

What about Indians living in US?

Around 20,000 people from India who arrived in the US illegally as children are fearing deportation, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) said.

"Over 27,000 Asian-Americans, including 5,500 Indians and Pakistanis, have already received DACA. An additional estimated 17,000 individuals from India and 6,000 from Pakistan are eligible for DACA, placing India among the top ten countries for DACA eligibility," SAALT said.

With the termination of DACA, these individuals could face deportation at the discretion of the administration....read more

Trump ends 'Dreamer' immigration programme, 800,000 face unsure future

The action was announced not by Trump but by Jeff Sessions

 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped an Obama-era programme that protects from deportation immigrants brought illegally into the United States as children, delaying implementation until March and giving a gridlocked Congress six months to decide the fate of almost 800,000 young people.

As the so-called Dreamers who have benefited from the five-year-old programme were plunged into uncertainty, business and religious leaders, mayors, governors, Democratic lawmakers, unions, civil liberties advocates and former Democratic President Barack Obama all condemned Trump’s move.

The action was announced not by Trump but by Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme an unconstitutional overreach by Obama. There will be an “orderly, lawful wind-down,” Sessions said.

Trump later issued a written statement saying that “I do not favour punishing children, most of whom are now adults, for the actions of their parents. But we must also recognise that we are (a) nation of opportunity because we are a nation of laws.”

He denounced Obama’s programme as an “amnesty-first approach” toward illegal immigrants and pressed his nationalist “America First” message, saying that despite concerns voiced by his critics about the fate of the Dreamers, “Above all else, we must remember that young Americans have dreams too.”

On Tuesday evening, the Republican president tweeted that lawmakers now had six months to “legalize DACA” and that if they did not, he would “revisit this issue!”

Obama issued his own statement calling Trump’s action a political decision, defending DACA’s legality and urging Congress to protect Dreamers....(Read More)