Monday, April 15, 2013

Immigration Roundup: DACA Denials at Last

by Laura D. Francis

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U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services April 12 posted figures on how many deferred action for childhood arrivals applications have been denied on the merits, the first time since the program was launched that the agency has released this data.

The total number of denials since August 2012 is 1,377.

The denials started trickling in last October, starting with six and leaping up to 841 in March of this year. The fact that USCIS was denying DACA applications as early as October led many to question why the agency waited so long to release the information publicly.

The earlier lack of denial information led former House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to question whether USCIS was denying DACA applications at all. Agency officials repeatedly said the reason for not having denial information was that denials take longer to finalize because applicants are given the opportunity to respond to notices of intent to deny.

But the information released April 12 shows that USCIS has been issuing denials for several months. The six denials in October and 15 in November seems to square with the anecdotal figure of 17 denials reported Nov. 19 by Stacy Shore, acting chief of staff at the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, at a Practising Law Institute conference.

Also of note, the number of incoming applications continues to decline each month. Only 30,943 DACA applications were filed in the entire month of March, less than the 49,961 applications filed in just the second half of August 2012.

According to an April 12 blog from the American Immigration Council, undocumented immigrants eligible for DACA are facing both geographic and financial roadblocks.

About 25 percent of DREAMers—young, undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children—live in rural communities, making it hard for them to enroll in an adult educational program that would qualify them for DACA, AIC said. And about 80 percent of the 55,000 DREAMers currently performing migrant farm work would have to meet that educational requirement.

Those migrant farmworkers also do not earn enough to be able to afford the $465 application fee, not to mention the difficulty of proving continuous residence and obtaining access to legal help, the blog said.

In Other Immigration News:

• The H-1B visa cap for highly skilled guestworkers was reached in the first week USCIS began accepting applications, prompting a lottery to decide who will get the 65,000 regular H-1B visas and the 20,000 visas for foreign workers with advanced degrees. The agency received about 124,000 petitions between April 1 and April 5, meaning nearly 40,000 will be rejected. While under the current program the losing employers can’t apply again until next April—and can’t get their H-1B guestworkers on board until Oct. 1, 2014—significant changes could be made to the H-1B program in a comprehensive immigration bill expected to be introduced April 16 by the Senate’s “gang of eight.”

• The Eleventh Circuit April 1 affirmed an injunction against the Labor Department’s new H-2B regulations, published in February 2012, determining that DOL doesn’t have the statutory authority to make such sweeping changes to the program. The H-2B program for low-skilled, nonagricultural guestworkers currently is in a state of flux, as DOL has no valid wage rule to use to make prevailing wage determinations under the program—its 2008 wage rule was enjoined in March by a federal district court in Pennsylvania, and the 2011 wage rule DOL issued to replace the 2008 rule has been barred by the most recent continuing resolution.

• The Obama administration for fiscal year 2014 is asking for about the same total amount for the Homeland Security Department as requested last year, but wants less in net discretionary funds than in previous years. The president’s budget request calls for an immigration system overhaul in line with principles Obama announced in late January, while asking for more money for improvements to the E-Verify electronic employment eligibility verification system.

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