More than 500,000 young immigrants have so far received work permits and relief from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that was announced by President Barack Obama two years ago. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently posted the DACA statistics revealing that the agency has so far granted DACA status to 553,197 undocumented youth. The agency has accepted a total of 642,685 requests out of which it has approved 553,197 requests. However, the agency has also rejected 30,732 requests due to various reasons.
77 percent of the applications that have been approved by USCIS are from Mexico. Statistics also show that most of the DACA recipients reside in California. Reports show that there are around 1.7 million undocumented youth who are potentially eligible for DACA. USCIS statistics show that around half of them have already received this temporary status.
DACA provides a temporary relief from deportation to certain young undocumented immigrants. These young immigrants must meet certain requirements to put in applications for DACA. Deferred action recipients will also be granted employment authorization documents but DACA will not provide a path to U.S. citizenship or legal permanent resident status.
USCIS will soon release new Form I-821D, Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), that can be used by both the initial applicants and those applying for renewal. The agency is likely to release the new dual-use form by the end of May 2014. People who have received deferred action status and who seek to renew their temporary status for another two years, will need to wait for USCIS to publish the new I-821D application.
The current form cannot be filed for DACA renewal and no renewal applications will now be accepted by USCIS. This applies to those who were granted DACA by USCIS and not to those who received this status from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Those who were granted DACA by ICE, can file the current Form I-821D to renew their status. Likewise, those applying for initial DACA can use the current form until the new dual-use form is published.
