Ten years later, nothing has changed with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA – a relief program fought and won by immigrant youth– was created in 2012 through executive action by President Obama to shield from deportation immigrant youth who were brought into the United States as children.
The existence of DACA was hard-earned and a result of continuous organizing and mobilizing and delivered by immigrant youth for the immigrant youth. To that end, current DACA recipients and those who may be eligible in the future must be protected. As it stands now the program does not provide a pathway to citizenship and remains to be a temporary protection that is renewable every two years at a time.
Last week, the Biden Administration finalized a formal rule for the DACA program which will go into effect on October 31st, 2022. This new rule purports to fortify the DACA program but does not expand eligibility and does not impact the status of current DACA recipients who may continue to renew, nor does it re-open DACA for the hundreds of thousands first-time eligible applicants who have never been able to apply.
The new rule does little to strengthen DACA in any meaningful ways and fails to update the arbitrary eligibility dates for the program, which means it leaves out the growing number of undocumented high school students who are making up most undocumented youth who do not qualify for DACA.
It also does not allow for the processing of applications from the nearly 80,000 people who applied for DACA in 2021 and are awaiting a decision on their cases. This makes the new ruling a missed opportunity by the administration to fully protect immigrant youth.
In a nutshell, the finalized rule is a major setback masquerading as codifying and fortifying the program. It also fails to address hundreds of thousands of first-time DACA applicants, immigrant youth who have aged into eligibility since 2017, and hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who were never able to apply and remain locked out of the program.
This new rule does not affect the status of current DACA recipients. In short: New Rule, Same DACA.
For years, the DACA program has been under continuous attack with court rulings and administration actions terminating, reinstating, or partially rolling it back every few months. And although DACA is currently legal, it still remains in danger. If the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ends the program it would have a devastating impact on millions of people including DACA recipients, DACA eligible youth, families and friends, and in general our communities. A ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals could put an end to DACA as we know it.
Although DACA was a step towards the right direction, it was never enough of a protection for the immigrant communities. This finalized rule does not fully protect DACA recipients, DACA-eligible youth, and most undocumented youth who do not meet current eligibility requirements.
This is why we have been urging the Biden administration to provide a pathway to permanent protections for millions of people facing the threat of deportation. The administration needs to be bold in protecting all DACA recipients and DACA-eligible youth by defending the hard-earned victory in court and pushing Congress to take action to pass permanent protections, like citizenship, for all undocumented people.
DACA is proof that when we organize, we win and that our organizing efforts during the comment period led to ensuring that work permits were not decoupled from the protections from deportation. As such the UndocuBlack Network encourages current DACA recipients to submit their renewals as soon as possible. While we fight for congress to take action on permanent protections for all, President Biden must be bold and unapologetic about defending and protecting our hard-earned victory.
We have said it before, and we will say it again: DACA is not enough!
