A subject of the GOVT 2305 textbook.
An example of an attempt by a president to establish a policy against the wishes of Congress by claiming that existing law allows him to do so.
- Click here for the entry for the DREAM Act.
- Click here for the entry for DACA.
- see also: Immigration to the United States.
From the latter:
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an American immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. To be eligible for the program, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records. Unlike the proposed DREAM Act, DACA does not provide a path to citizenship for recipients, known as Dreamers.[1][2] The policy, an executive branch memorandum, was announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for the program on August 15, 2012.
In November 2014, President Obama announced his intention to expand DACA to cover additional undocumented immigrants. Multiple states immediately sued to prevent the expansion which was ultimately blocked by an evenly divided Supreme Court. Under President Trump the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the expansion on June 16, 2017, while continuing to review the existence of the DACA program as a whole. Plans to phase out DACA were announced by the Trump Administration on September 5, 2017; implementation was put on hold for six months to allow Congress time to pass the Dream Act or some other legislative protection for Dreamers. Congress failed to act and the time extension expired on March 5, 2018, but the phase-out of DACA has been put on hold by several courts. On August 31, 2018, District Court Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that DACA is likely unconstitutional. However, he let the program remain in place as litigation proceeds.[3][4] As of October 2019, the cancellation of the program was on hold by court order; a Supreme Court decision on the matter was not expected until 2020.[5]
