What does Supreme Court’s ruling in DAPA and Expanded DACA mean?

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a 4-4 decision on the state of Texas’s challenge to President Obama’s proposed executive immigration programs. These programs included the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, which would have allowed some parents of U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents to apply for a work permit in the United States and to be protected from deportation, and an expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that was initially announced on June 15, 2012. The original DACA program allowed people who arrived in the U.S. before age 16 and were under age 31 when the program was introduced to apply for work authorization and protection from deportation. The expansion of the DACA program had been announced in order to allow more people to qualify for protection under DACA. 

The New York Times reports that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the case against President Obama's Executive Immigration Programs. President Obama announced his executive immigration programs, including Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA), in November 2014, but the state of Texas and several other states sued to block their implementation. The Supreme Court's decision to hear this case means that the previous decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which held the programs to be impermissibe and temporarily blocked them from being implemented, may be overturned.

On December 1, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request from Texas and other states for a 30-day extension to file legal briefs in support of the lawsuit to block the DAPA program. Instead of the 30-day extension, the Court allowed an extension of only eight days. This is viewed as a procedural victory for the Obama administration as it would allow the court to hear the case during its current term and give the administration enough time to launch the program while Obama is still in office. If the Supreme Court hears the case during its current term, the decision would likely be published in June 2016.

Kathryn N. Karam is quoted in the Houston Business Journal's recent article on Texas vs. United States, the suit filed by several stated to stop the Obama Administration's Executive Actions for Immigration Reform.

This evening, Kathryn N. Karam was a guest on KPFT Pacifica Radio's Proyecto Latino-Americano show with Henry and Alma Cooper at 9 PM . The podcast from the February 17th airing of Proyecto Latino-Americano is available here.

A Federal Court in Brownsville, Texas has issued a temporary injunction to stop the implementation of the executive actions announced by President Obama in November 2014, including the extended DACA program and the DAPA program. As a result, USCIS has announced that it will not begin accepting applications for protection under the extended DACA program tomorrow as originally announced. However, the Court's order does not affect the existing DACA program originally announced on June 15, 2012.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that beginning February 18, 2015, it will accept applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) under the new extension of the program announced in November 2014.

The House passed a bill today that would fund the Department of Homeland Security through September 2015, but will block funding for the Executive Action programs announced by President Obama in November 2014, including the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program, and the extension of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that reaches more individuals than the original 2012 DACA program. As the bill makes its way to the Senate, Democrats have vowed to stop these contested parts of the DHS Appropriations bill to ensure that they do not survive.

On Friday, House Republicans introduced legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security but stop the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implemented in 2012, and the new executive actions announced by President Obama in November 2014, including the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program. The legislation is not expected to pass the Senate and is intended to be a symbolic gesture to show how far Republicans are willing to go to contest actions taken by President Obama, according to the New York Times.

Kathryn Karam's new article on p. 54 of this month's issue of Lebanon Times Magazine discusses changes to the immigration system implemented to help immigrant families.