By Paul Nachman
10/10/2022
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] is the flagrantly lawless administrative amnesty of “young” (up to age 31, as of mid-2012!) illegal aliens foisted upon the nation in 2012 by The Little Prince (aka “President Pants-on-Fire”). The criteria for DACA eligibility are listed in a document, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, archived by the Department of Homeland Security:
You may request consideration of deferred action for childhood arrivals if you:
- Were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012;
- Came to the United States before reaching your 16th birthday;
- Have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007, up to the present time;
- Were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and at the time of making your request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS;
- Entered without inspection before June 15, 2012, or your lawful immigration status expired as of June 15, 2012;
- Are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; and
- Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.
Note qualification #2! They didn’t have to be “brought.”
I raise this point because VDARE.com’s A.W. Morgan got this point wrong in his October 6 blog post that reported welcome news: Finally, A Win For The Historic American Nation; DACA’s Days Might Be Numbered. He summarized DACA as “the Obama Regime’s illegal Amnesty that permitted illegal-alien kids, brought to the United States ’through no fault of their own,’ to stay in the country.” Emphases added.
Undoubtedly most of the DACAbrats were brought here, but equally surely, many came on their own as teenagers, so that the cloying “through no fault of their own” language doesn’t apply. In other words, some DACAbrats are manifestly immigration criminals, not just children of immigration criminals.
Interestingly, Wikipedia — horribly biased on political subjects but generally reliable when dealing with straightforward legal language — gets it wrong, too:
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, colloquially referred to as DACA, is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children …
There’s that word “brought” again.
The language is important. DACA was peddled as relief for a sterling crew of valedictorians, military heroes, and other geniuses, caught up in a heartless immigration-system’s maw. But those were merely a few oddballs in sea of about 800,000 ordinary mopes that also includes a generous sprinkling of individuals like the one Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies wrote about in Criminal Alien “DREAMer” Assaults ICE Agent, Gets Released on Prosecutorial Discretion (July 20, 2012). Read that and grind your teeth.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.