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NY TIMES story, front page

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National Push by a Local Immigration Activist: No G.O.P. Retreat

 

D.A. King, center, at a July rally in Washington  against amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Credit…Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

By Julia Preston

ATLANTA — He says the United States is filling up with immigrants who do not respect the law or the American way of life. He refers to Latino groups as “the tribalists,” saying they seek to impose a divisive ethnic agenda. Of his many adversaries, he says: “The illegal alien lobby never changes. It’s the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party joining forces with the Chamber of Commerce, the far left and the Democrats in an effort to expand cheap labor and increase voting for the Democratic Party.”

D. A. King, who quit his job as an insurance agent a decade ago to wage a full-time campaign against illegal immigration in Georgia, is one reason this state rivals Arizona for the toughest legal crackdown in the country. With his Southern manners and seersucker jackets, he works the halls of the gold-domed statehouse, familiar to all, polite and uncompromising.

Now, like other local activists around the country, he is looking beyond Georgia to stop the House of Representatives from following the Senate and passing legislation that would open a path to legal status for illegal immigrants.

As lawmakers return to their home districts for the August recess, advocates like Mr. King are joining forces with national groups that oppose legalization and favor reduced immigration for an all-out populist push.

“These local people live in the middle of these places, they know how to be effective in their districts,” said Roy Beck, executive director of one of the largest national groups, NumbersUSA, who is now holding regular strategy calls with Mr. King and more than 50 other state advocates.

The zeal of militants like Mr. King is a problem for the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, and other Republican leaders, who are hoping to steer their divided caucus to pass a House version of legislation to fix the broken immigration system, which could include legal status for those who lack it — though probably not citizenship.

Mr. King’s “respectful but firm” message for the speaker, he said in an interview, is that “any vote for legalization would be a matter of very great consequence for the people who voted for conservative congressmen from Georgia.”

Mr. King says his wrath grew slowly, beginning in the 1990s with a feud with Mexican neighbors who disrupted the quiet of his leafy street. In Mr. King’s account, they parked fleets of run-down vehicles on their lawn and at one point housed 22 people in a jerry-built warren of rental rooms in the basement.

He took the neighbor to court over code violations, and the conflict boiled for seven years until the family moved away.

A visit in 2004 to the Southwest border convinced Mr. King that the country was facing “what was easily described as an invasion.” Returning to Georgia, he made common cause with the struggling father of a teenage boy killed in a car accident by a reckless driver who was an illegal immigrant. He named his organization the Dustin Inman Society, after the boy.

The mistrust of Mr. Boehner among Mr. King and his allies deepened recently when the speaker rebuked an anti-amnesty hero, Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, for commenting that young immigrants here illegally had “calves the size of cantaloupes” from running drugs across the border.

Mr. King in Georgia said he sided squarely with the congressman of the same name, although he might have chosen a milder metaphor. He nonetheless spared little in his description of Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who was one of the authors of the Senate bill, calling him a “smarmy and dishonest” turncoat. During the Senate debate, Mr. King designed and paid for thousands of bumper stickers as well as three large billboards along a commuter highway near Atlanta.

“Help us stop RubiObama amnesty!” one big sign read, with President Obama’s name joined by his hallmark red-white-and-blue letter to that of Senator Rubio.

His billboards instructed drivers to call a senator from Georgia, Johnny Isakson. Mr. Isakson, who supported a comprehensive bill in 2007, voted against the Senate legislation this year.

In Georgia, Mr. King has not been afraid to take on many adversaries, including the farmers and growers, business organizations, labor unions and Latinos. A big-shouldered former Marine, he often shows up with his own placards at rallies called by his opponents — just to let them know he is watching.

“I was taught that we have an American culture to which immigrants will assimilate,” Mr. King said. “And I am incredibly resentful that’s not what’s happening anymore.”

Mr. King, 61, runs his one-man operation from the small guest room of his home on a tree-shaded cul-de-sac in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, equipped with an aging desktop computer and a chair that he acknowledges “needs a new coat of duct tape.” He lives on small donations, and to keep it all going he spent down his savings, ran up his credit cards, refinanced his house three times and “sold the stock my grandmother left me.”

He is unmoved by the protests of Latino and immigrant groups that the Obama administration has already done more than enough enforcement, with more than 1.6 million deportations those groups say have sown fear in their neighborhoods.

Mr. King wants a lot more enforcement before the House does anything else on immigration. He sees the Senate bill as a scheme by Democrats to create legions of new government-dependent voters for their party. He feels certain House Republicans will ultimately reject it.

“The tribalists will not make any difference with any Republican who has enough sense to get on an airplane every Monday and fly to Washington,” Mr. King said.

In his recent meetings in the statehouse, Mr. King huddled with two Republicans, Senator Josh McKoon and Representative Edward Lindsey, who called in by phone. They laid plans for Republicans in the state legislature to send a letter to all the Georgia lawmakers in the House, urging them to focus on enforcement and avoid legalization.

Mr. King is joining a surge of activity among his allies that was spurred by the Senate vote in June. At NumbersUSA, Mr. Beck said, more than 400,000 people signed on to an e-mail list as the vote approached, expanding its followers to more than 1.6 million names. Mr. Beck said a recent conference call he convened with followers was joined by 58,770 people.

But Jerry Gonzalez, a Latino leader in Georgia who is one of Mr. King’s oldest rivals, pointed to new demographics that House lawmakers would have to consider. The number of registered Latino voters in the state grew to 184,000 in 2012 from 10,000 a decade earlier, with more than 200,000 legal immigrants eligible to become citizens.

 

The Dangerous Gambit of the Enforcement Moratorium and Amnesty Legislation

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Image: Rightwingwatch

No one wants to negotiate with a gun to their head

Center for Immigration Studies

By Andrew R. Arthur on January 27, 2021

 

In a January 22 post, my colleague Jessica Vaughan analyzed a 100-day immigration enforcement moratorium put in place by the Biden administration, in one of its first acts. The memorandum laying out that moratorium all but eviscerates immigration enforcement in the United States, as Vaughan noted. It is a dangerous — but perhaps inevitable — gambit, as the new administration pushes a massive amnesty for almost every alien unlawfully present in the United States.

To recap that memorandum announcing a 100-day “pause”, beginning February 1, there will be just three “priorities” for immigration enforcement generally: national security threats, aliens who crossed the border illegally on or after November 1, 2020, and aliens convicted of an “aggravated felony” who are “are determined to pose a threat to public safety”.

That applies not just to removals (aliens who do not fall within one of the priorities will not be removed as of January 22), but to arrests and detentions of aliens who are not a “priority”, as well. That means that nonimmigrant overstays (who make up the majority of aliens illegally present in the United States), aliens who have received due process and are under final orders of removal, and criminal aliens who are not a “priority” will get off scot-free, at least for the next three-plus months, and likely longer.

In other words, in all but the most extreme cases, there will be no immigration enforcement in the United States at all.

But as my colleague Mark Krikorian explained recently, there are no immigration reforms in the proposed amnesty, either. What gives?

Usually, at least a window-dressing of enforcement precedes an amnesty proposal. Why were there almost 370,000 removals in FY 2008? Then-President George W. Bush wanted an amnesty. Why were there almost 410,000 removals in FY 2012? Then-President Obama wanted one, too.

The legislative strategy traditionally has been to show that you are serious about enforcement, and then argue for amnesty for aliens brought to the United States as minors, or for parents of children born here, or for “otherwise law-abiding” aliens illegally present.

Perhaps the Biden administration has decided that this was not a winning tack (there was no Bush or Obama amnesty), and opted to go in the other direction. I am not privy to its deliberations and tactics, but if it has opted to use enforcement (or more precisely, a lack thereof) as a bargaining chip to get a massive legalization bill passed, it will likely backfire.

I have worked on Capitol Hill, and drafted and negotiated legislation that has become law, so I would like to think that I have a certain level of expertise in the crafting of proposals into laws. No one wants to negotiate with a gun to their head, and some Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns in the 2022 off-year elections may have to take a walk on this one.

That said, the Biden administration may have felt that it had no choice except to halt almost all immigration enforcement. If you plan on giving status to everyone except a handful of aliens illegally present as of an arbitrary date, it is inconsistent to arrest — let alone remove — them before that amnesty takes effect.

Why? Because that means that the legislation will either exclude those removed or expressly let them back into the United States (or worse, have the American taxpayers pay to fly them back). In legislative terms, the “optics” of such returns are bad, and hard to defend.

But again, the Biden non-enforcement strategy is risky. Some crimes are victimless in the abstract, but there are a lot of victims of the crimes for which those aliens will not be removed.

Consider, for example, DUI, which is not actually a ground of removability and would — except in the most extreme cases — not fall within one of the new “priorities” for removal. I would regularly see respondents on my docket as an immigration judge who had entered illegally (and therefore were removable) and come to ICE’s attention after a DUI arrest, however. Read the rest here.

 

Stopping Birth tourism in the United States and Canada – CIS

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Photo: Library of Congress

“President Trump took action in January 2020 to limit birth tourism by specifying that giving birth in the U.S. is not a legitimate grounds for obtaining a visitor visa.”

Washington, D.C. (August 10, 2020) – A new report by the Center for Immigration Studies examines the practice, and negative impacts, of birth tourism in the United States and other developed countries, and recommends policies to minimize the practice of selling citizenship.

The U.S. and Canada are the only G7 nations with birthright citizenship policies; these have been exploited and contributed to the birth tourism industry, which encourages the practice of pregnant foreign mothers travelling to the United States or Canada on legal visas, received through fraudulent claims, with the sole intention of delivering their children on American or Canadian soil in order to secure citizenship for their newborns.

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates 20,000 to 26,000 possible birth tourists in the U.S. annually. In Canada, between 2010 and 2018, the number of children born to foreign mothers soared by 202 percent with 75 percent of births to foreign mothers occurring in just 25 hospitals. These numbers do not include the large number of illegal immigrants who migrate to North America to take advantage of the birthright citizenship policies. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that, in 2014, roughly 297,000 children were born to illegal aliens in the United States, costing up to $2.4 billion annually in Medicaid taxpayer dollars.

President Trump took action in January 2020 to limit birth tourism by specifying that giving birth in the U.S. is not a legitimate grounds for obtaining a visitor visa. The State Department has stopped issuing temporary visitor visas to pregnant female applicants who are planning to deliver their babies in the U.S. This report provides other policies that this administration or the next can take to limit the number of foreign nationals coming to the U.S. to give birth to a child who in later years can return to the U.S., at great expense to U.S. taxpayers, to take advantage of free public schools, in-state college tuition, low-interest student loans, federal education scholarships, and eventually sponsor family members through chain migration policies. In addition, these actions will also reduce the burden presently placed on the American healthcare system, both financially and physically, as hospitals are routinely abused by birth tourists… Read the rest here.

How much of the Covid is coming to Texas from Mexico?

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The Texas Covid Crisis

Revamp Trump’s emergency border closure and pull data for policy-making — right now

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By Todd Bensman on July 6, 2020

AUSTIN, Texas — The national narrative about the current State of Texas Covid-19 crisis (and Arizona’s and California’s) goes like this: Fault for the escalating spike in hospitalizations that have overwhelmed Texas care facilities falls entirely to Gov. Greg Abbott’s phased reopening and the cavalier partying of bar patrons and spring-break revelers, all exclusively inside the state. The governor and local officials are succumbing to the narrative by reinstituting closures as a guard against future youthful stupidity.

But my Border Patrol sources, Mexican media reports, and obscure local media reporting at the border tell a Texas story at sharp variance with that narrative. Taken all together, the collection of reporting persuasively suggests that some percentage of the Texas Covid-19 hospitalizations, likely a significant one, comes from an ongoing influx of seriously ill patients who caught the virus in Covid-exploding Mexico and are legally and illegally crossing the border to flee that country’s completely overrun health system. Refusal to acknowledge this ground truth and to excavate the data necessary to inform the right policy choices presents a danger to life that is more real than any imagined political offense by stating that Mexico is a source.

Strong Evidence: “Hundreds” of Sick Border Patrol Agents, and Much More

Enough evidence is now on hand that severely ill patients are pouring over from Mexico and adding to the American counts of hospitalization and death, probably coinciding with regular community spread resulting from recent mass protests. What’s needed now is acknowledgement that there are at least two merging streams, not to be conflated with one another.

The most convincing evidence emerged from national reporting back in May, before widespread second-wave spikes generating the current panicked and uninformed policy responses. These are no longer cited in context of the crisis that much more recently developed: The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and most recently, to its rare credit, CNN on June 29, have established a credible anecdotal baseline that Covid-19 patients have been flooding through California and Arizona border ports of entry from Mexico (some illegally) — by the thousands — since at least mid-May as the virus struck our southern neighbor a month or two behind the United States. It was no coincidence that at the same time the Baja and Sonora state hospital systems were seizing up in worst-case scenarios of deadly convulsions.

The CNN report confirmed other reports that American expatriates and Mexican visa-holders were coming up to California ports of entry aboard ambulances, or calling ambulances as they were crossing on foot. The CNN story, for instance, quoted Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, calling what is underway “an unprecedented surge across the border”. The same June 29 story quoted California’s emergency medical services authority head Dr. David Duncan describing “the steady stream” coming into Imperial County as “gas on the fire” that will “continue to escalate and fuel the Covid pressures that we see.”

None of these reports, however, mention the highly similar circumstances in Texas or the fact that Mexico’s Tamaulipas state hospitals right across from the Texas ones are seizing up, in Matamoros, across from Brownsville; in Reynosa, across from McAllen; in Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo; and in Juarez, across from El Paso.

On Friday, a Border Patrol agent who works the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas told me his leadership had informed agents that more than 350 of their ranks had been pulled off the line in just that sector and placed in quarantine, including 120 confirmed agent cases, because at least in part “the number of illegals we catch with positive Covid are increasing.” This tracked with CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan telling a Senate committee hearing on June 25, that “several hundred” of his agents were infected with the virus due to “high-risk contact” with infected migrants they apprehended.

Please read the rest here from the Center for Immigration Studies

Michelle Malkin’s Twitter List of Recent Outsourcers/Offshorers

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Michelle Malkin. Photo: The Hill.com

From ProtectUSWorkers.com

Leave it to the Queen of the fight for human rights, MICHELLE MALKIN, to blast several tweets calling out “some” of the latest outsourcing/offshoring companies. I say “some” because so many companies are able to conduct this awful business model under the radar. Also, this is merely “some” because there are so many companies that have done this (once, twice and sometimes multiple times) over the past thirty years that are not included on this list.

But how can so many American workers get fired, many forced to train foreign visa holders to do their jobs, and the jobs go to foreign visa holders in and out of the United States?
1. Terrible American immigration and business laws.
2. Greedy business owners and investors who place money over people.
3. Consistently terrible politicians on this issue because they are bought or uneducated.
4. Lying politicians who pretend they will help but do not help at all.
5. The fake “we need more foreign workers” slogan from the billionaires who benefit from this business model.
6. The one that hurts the most: the millions of terrified American workers who refuse to stand up against their termination, and forced training of foreign visa holders, because of a false self preservation sold to them by the billionaires who benefit from this business model.
7. The everyday American people who just have not learned, or just do not care because it does not yet touch them personally, who do not stand up for those who are victims.

Maybe this incredible list will help Americans stand strong and stand together to fight against this awful, greedy business model. Maybe, this is a stretch, but, maybe, a politician will use this information to make a change in the government to stop this parasite that is killing our middle class.

1. Wayfair. 550 US workers terminated February 2020.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/13/business/layoffs-underway-wayfair/

2. Tripadvisor. Laid off 200 American workers January 2020.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-23/tripadvisor-cuts-hundreds-of-jobs-after-google-competition-bites

3. LogMeln. Canned 300 American workers January 2020.
https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-based-logmein-laying-off-8-of-workforce/31037817

4. Silicon Valley companies Zume Pizza, VMWare, Shutterfly, Intel, Comcast, Xilinx, 23andMe & NortonLifeLock will lay off more than 1,000 US tech workers in February and March of 2020.

5. AT&T fired nearly 3000-5000 American jobs in the past several months. This is only the latest round for this company who loves this get-rich-quick business model.
https://www.axios.com/trump-att-outsourcing-h1b-visa-foreign-workers-1f26cd20-664a-4b5f-a2e3-361c8d2af502.html

 

Much more here.

On Gov Kemp’s HB444 – zero verification to exclude high-school illegal aliens from taxpayer-funded college seats (raw notes)

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Image: The Dustin Inman Society

More here.

HB444 House sponsors: (original version here)
(1) Reeves, Bert 34th(2) Lott, Jodi 122nd(3) Rogers, Terry 10th

(4) LaRiccia, Dominic 169th(5) Knight, David 130th

Sponsored In Senate By

Strickland, Brian 17th

*See Gov Kemp’s floor leaders here.

HB444 Senate substitute   

Lines 55-63 here as passed by the Republican – ruled state senate on January 28, 2020.

‘Eligible high school student’ means a student entering ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grade at an eligible high school. who is:

 (A) Entering or enrolled in eleventh or twelfth grade at an eligible high school taking any eligible dual credit course at any eligible postsecondary institution; or
(B) Entering or enrolled in tenth grade at an eligible high school when such student:

 Is enrolled in an eligible CTAE course at an institution within the Technical College System of Georgia;
(ii) Has obtained prior to the beginning of the term of dual enrollment coursework an SAT or ACT test score that would meet the assessment requirements of a Zell Miller Scholar pursuant to division (27)(A)(i) of Code Section 20-3-519 and is taking eligible core courses at any eligible postsecondary institution; or
(iii) Was enrolled as a ninth grader in one or more dual credit courses at an eligible postsecondary institution for which payment was made under this part on or before June 30, 2020.

Lines 17- 22:

“This Code section shall be known and may be cited as the ‘Move on When Ready Act.’ ‘Dual Enrollment Act.’ The purpose of the Dual Enrollment program is to promote and increase access to postsecondary educational opportunities for Georgia high school students while increasing   high school graduation rates, preparing a skilled workforce, and decreasing time and cost to postsecondary credential completion.”

Senate Vote record here. (January 28, 2020)

House vote record (2019) here.

Public Charge Inadmissibility Final Rule: Revised Forms and Updated Policy Manual Guidance – from USCIS

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has published revised forms consistent with the final rule on the public charge ground of inadmissibility, which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including USCIS, will implement on Feb. 24, 2020. Beginning Feb. 24, 2020, applicants and petitioners must use new editions of the following forms below (except in Illinois, where the rule remains enjoined by a federal court):

In addition, except in Illinois, applicants for adjustment of status subject to the public charge ground of inadmissibility and the Final Rule will be required to submit Form I-944, Declaration of Self Sufficiency. Certain applicants whom USCIS invites to submit a public charge bond will use the new Form I-945, Public Charge Bond, for that purpose, and the new Form I-356, Request for Cancellation of Public Charge Bond, to request cancellation of a public charge bond.

Certain classes of aliens (such as refugees, asylees, petitioners under the federal Violence Against Women Act, and certain T and U visa applicants) are exempt from the public charge ground of inadmissibility and therefore are not subject to the Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds final rule. For more information about the classes of aliens who are exempt from the final rule, please see the USCIS Policy Manual.

Reporting Information About Benefits

The final rule requires aliens to report certain information related to public benefits. Instructions for Form I-944 require aliens subject to the public charge ground of inadmissibility to report and submit information about whether the alien applied for, was certified or approved to receive, or received certain non-cash public benefits on or after Oct. 15, 2019.

Instructions for Forms I-129, I-129CW, and I-539 require the petitioner or alien to report whether the alien received public benefits since obtaining the nonimmigrant status the alien seeks to extend or change.

Due to litigation-related delays in the rule’s implementation, USCIS is applying all references to Oct. 15, 2019, as though they refer to Feb. 24, 2020. Petitioners and applicants should do the same. In other words, aliens do not need to report the application, certification or approval to receive, or receipt of certain non-cash public benefits on the Form I-944 before Feb. 24, 2020. Similarly, petitioners and aliens do not need to report an alien’s receipt of any public benefits on Forms I-129, I-129CW, and I-539 if the benefits were received before Feb. 24, 2020.

Postmarks and Submission Dates for Forms

USCIS will accept the current edition of these forms if they are postmarked (or submitted electronically, if applicable) before Feb. 24, 2020. We will not accept them if they are postmarked on or after Feb. 24, 2020, except in Illinois. For applications and petitions that are sent by commercial courier (such as UPS, FedEx or DHL), the postmark date is the date reflected on the courier receipt.

Illinois Residents

​​USCIS is prohibited from implementing the final rule in Illinois, where it remains enjoined by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. If the injunction in Illinois is lifted, USCIS will provide additional public guidance. If you are applying for immigration benefits and live in Illinois, or are a petitioning employer in Illinois, please review the information on our website about how Illinois residents may access forms and apply in light of the injunction.

Further Information

USCIS has also published guidance based on the final rule in the Policy Manual. For additional information, see the Policy Alert.

For more information about the final rule, see the Final Rule on Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility webpage.

Congressional Budget Office: “Immigration has negative effect on wages”

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Image: WSJ.com

Via Breitbart News: Immigration makes all of America richer, but it can make some Americans poorer, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says in a report issued January 9.

“Immigration, whether legal or illegal, expands the labor force and changes its composition, leading to increases in total economic output,” said the non-partisan report, titled “The Foreign-Born Population and Its Effects on the U.S. Economy and the Federal Budget—An Overview.”

But this national expansion does “not necessarily [deliver] to increases in output per capita,” or income per person, the report said:

For example, business leaders say the nation’s enormous population of immigrants has expanded the nation’s workforce, increased consumption, and driven up housing prices. But that inflow has also shrunk the wages of less-educated Americans, the report said:

Among people with less education, a large percentage are foreign born. Consequently, immigration has exerted downward pressure on the wages of relatively low-skilled workers who are already in the country, regardless of their birthplace.

The CBO report contradicts business claims that a bigger economy ensures bigger wages for everyone.

More ominously, the report also suggests that the American middle-class — including millions of young college graduates — may suffer a similar economic disaster if immigration policy is shifted to raise the inflow of foreign college graduates. The report says:

The effects of immigration on wages depend on the characteristics of the immigrants. To the extent that newly arrived workers have abilities similar to those of workers already in the country, immigration would have a negative effect on wages.

Many business advocates in Washington are calling for a dramatic increase in “high-skilled immigration” — meaning foreign college graduates who would compete for the same jobs as American college graduates. For example, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is trying to pass his S.386 bill that offers the prize of renewable work-permits — and eventual citizenship — to an unlimited number of foreign graduates.

Each year, up to 120,000 foreign graduates — and their spouses and children — can get green cards via their employer’s sponsorship, even as perhaps 800,000 Americans graduate from college with skilled degrees. More here.

DACA: include Murder, Rape, Weapon and Assault Charges – USCIS Releases Report on Arrest Histories of Illegal Aliens who Request DACA

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DACA protester. Photo: Getty Images

USCIS Releases Report on Arrest Histories of Illegal Aliens who Request DACA

– 

WASHINGTON—Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) updated data  (PDF, 756 KB) on arrests and apprehensions of illegal aliens who requested Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The release of this report reflects the agency’s ongoing focus on transparency. The report provides updated information on known arrests and apprehensions of DACA requestors. The data may include arrests that did not result in convictions or where the charges were dropped or otherwise dismissed.

Among the findings of the release are the following:

  • Nearly 110,000 DACA requestors out of nearly 889,000 (12%) had arrest records. Offenses in these arrest records include assault, battery, rape, murder and driving under the influence.
  • Of approved DACA requestors with an arrest, 85% (67,861) of them were arrested or apprehended before their most recent DACA approval.
  • Of approved DACA requestors with an arrest, more than 31% (24,898) of them had more than one arrest.
  • Of all DACA requestors, 218 had more than 10 arrests. Of those, 54 had a DACA case status of “approved” as of October 2019.

“As DACA continues to be the subject of both public discourse and ongoing litigation, USCIS remains committed to ensuring transparency and that the American people are informed about those receiving DACA,” said USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli. “This agency is obligated to continue accepting DACA requests from illegal aliens as a direct result of the previous administration’s decision to circumvent the laws as passed by Congress. We hope this data provides a better sense of the reality of those granted the privilege of a temporary deferral of removal action and work authorization under DACA.”

Under current DACA guidelines, illegal aliens may be considered for DACA if they have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, or three or more “non-significant” misdemeanors not arising out of the same act, omission or scheme of misconduct, and they do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. The number of arrests illegal aliens have do not necessarily disqualify them from receiving DACA as a matter of discretion.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us on Twitter (@uscis), Instagram (/uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis), and LinkedIn (/uscis).