Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Executive Action - DACA and DAPA

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced that he was instituting reforms to immigration by executive order since Congress failed to act.  The list of reforms is a long one, and I will try to post links to resources in a future post.  

Two major actions are the expansion of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the creation of DAPA (Deferred Action for Parental Accountability).  DACA allows individuals who came as children, were educated here and have been here for five years to apply for employment authorization.  DAPA allows parents of U.S. Citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident children who came before January 1, 2010 and are not on a priority list for removal to be able to apply for employment authorization.

It is very important to know that no guidance on the new programs has been released.  No one can file an application right now (with the exception of people who fit within the old DACA criteria).  I urge people to beware of attorneys and notarios who area taking fees for applications that do not exist for a process that has not been fully described. 

We will be posting more on this over the next few days, weeks and months.