President Trump will not be forgiving of illegal immigrants, even those who benefit from the DACA program, unless they provide a "unique benefit" to the United States, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at a recent hearing.
The urgent need to enact legal protections for noncitizens brought into the country as children was highlighted at a hearing on Wednesday by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, entitled "Dream Deferred: The Urgent Need to Protect Immigrant Youth." Program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows "Dreamers" to get work permits and stave off deportation. But there is currently no route to citizenship under the program, and DACA does not provide green cards.
Mr. Graham said during the hearing that "unless you really truly have a unique benefit to the country or an unusual humanitarian situation, you are going to be kicked out if President Trump wins, I predict. I am not going to speak for him." "Millions of people have just been waved into the country," he said.
As of December 31, 2023, there were approximately 530,000 DACA participants throughout the nation, according to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Mexico leads the group with about 429,000 individuals, followed by Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia.
Tom Wong, an assistant professor of political science at UC San Diego and the founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC), suggested at the hearing that "dreamers" be granted a route to citizenship, claiming that doing so would "significantly improve the American economy."
Dreamers pay $13 billion in total in federal, state, and local taxes yearly, and their salaries are anticipated to contribute $45 billion to the U.S. economy annually. Undocumented youth might engage more completely and successfully in the workforce if they had a route to citizenship, he said.
The Center for Immigration Studies' (CIS) Jessica Vaughan, head of policy studies, cautioned against the notion.
"Congress would be gravely misguided to consider an amnesty or legalization program at this time, when the government does not have operational control over the border and is apprehending and releasing illegal migrants on a mass scale, whether it be for DACA recipients or any other group of illegal aliens," she stated.
Unaccompanied kids were among the "significant increase in the number of illegal aliens being apprehended at the southern border" that the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) recorded after the implementation of DACA.
An amnesty that would cover illegal immigrants' children, if not their entire family, was very likely to be implemented in the near future, according to the impression that was created by the DACA program, the push for a broad amnesty in 2013, and Barack Obama's attempt to enact a similar amnesty by executive fiat in 2014.
Under the Trump administration, the inflow only began to decline in 2017. Ms. Vaughan said that DACA increased the expense of public welfare and assistance programs, protected criminals from deportation, and excluded lawfully employed Americans from job possibilities.
She voiced further worries about the inadequate DACA verification procedures. A USCIS study states that around 12% of DACA applicants had criminal histories for crimes including assault, battery, rape, murder, and driving while intoxicated. Of those applicants, 85% were granted approval.
The urgent need to enact legal protections for noncitizens brought into the country as children was highlighted at a hearing on Wednesday by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, entitled "Dream Deferred: The Urgent Need to Protect Immigrant Youth." Program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) allows "Dreamers" to get work permits and stave off deportation. But there is currently no route to citizenship under the program, and DACA does not provide green cards.
Mr. Graham said during the hearing that "unless you really truly have a unique benefit to the country or an unusual humanitarian situation, you are going to be kicked out if President Trump wins, I predict. I am not going to speak for him." "Millions of people have just been waved into the country," he said.
As of December 31, 2023, there were approximately 530,000 DACA participants throughout the nation, according to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Mexico leads the group with about 429,000 individuals, followed by Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia.
Tom Wong, an assistant professor of political science at UC San Diego and the founding director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC), suggested at the hearing that "dreamers" be granted a route to citizenship, claiming that doing so would "significantly improve the American economy."
Dreamers pay $13 billion in total in federal, state, and local taxes yearly, and their salaries are anticipated to contribute $45 billion to the U.S. economy annually. Undocumented youth might engage more completely and successfully in the workforce if they had a route to citizenship, he said.
The Center for Immigration Studies' (CIS) Jessica Vaughan, head of policy studies, cautioned against the notion.
"Congress would be gravely misguided to consider an amnesty or legalization program at this time, when the government does not have operational control over the border and is apprehending and releasing illegal migrants on a mass scale, whether it be for DACA recipients or any other group of illegal aliens," she stated.
Unaccompanied kids were among the "significant increase in the number of illegal aliens being apprehended at the southern border" that the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) recorded after the implementation of DACA.
An amnesty that would cover illegal immigrants' children, if not their entire family, was very likely to be implemented in the near future, according to the impression that was created by the DACA program, the push for a broad amnesty in 2013, and Barack Obama's attempt to enact a similar amnesty by executive fiat in 2014.
Under the Trump administration, the inflow only began to decline in 2017. Ms. Vaughan said that DACA increased the expense of public welfare and assistance programs, protected criminals from deportation, and excluded lawfully employed Americans from job possibilities.
She voiced further worries about the inadequate DACA verification procedures. A USCIS study states that around 12% of DACA applicants had criminal histories for crimes including assault, battery, rape, murder, and driving while intoxicated. Of those applicants, 85% were granted approval.
