A federal appeals court ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for undocumented immigrants is illegal.
This is a program created in 2012 during the Obama Administration (when Joe Biden was Vice President), which allowed all illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children to be able to work or study without risk of deportation.
Now Justice deals a blow to Joe Biden, who said he wanted "a permanent path to citizenship for DACA recipients." Although the court ruling blocked new applications for the program, current beneficiaries (about 594,000 individuals, known as "dreamers") are not affected.
Among the benefits that dreamers receive are Social Security numbers, work permits, education funding and driver's licenses.
The Democratic Party promoted and heralded DACA as a key measure that allowed hundreds of thousands of young people to reside legally in the United States without having to obtain their green cards through constitutional channels, the court noted:
DACA creates a new class of otherwise removable aliens who may obtain lawful presence, work authorization, and associated benefits.
The court ruled that "the legal issues presented by DACA are serious" for all parties involved. "In our view, the program did not demonstrate that there is a likelihood that it will succeed," the appeals court concluded.
The end of DACA?
One of the states with the biggest illegal immigration problems is Texas. In 2018, Texas, along with eight other states, sued over the illegality of DACA. Three years later, U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas blocked all new DACA applications, although he upheld those of participants already benefiting from the program. For this reason, Joe Biden appealed to the appeals court.
One of Biden's promises when he became president was to find a solution for the "dreamers," although he did not achieve consensus on immigration, one of the most important issues on the U.S. political agenda.
