93 percent of applicants to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama via executive action in 2012 receive approval, a statistic that could have an impact on the decision taken by the Supreme Court on the DAPA case, the legal challenge over the broader immigration reform he took in 2014.
The Washington Examiner claims that given that the two programs are extremely similar DACA’s performance could be used by the Supreme Court to examine the potential impact of DAPA. As of December last year, as many as 715,000 applications for DACA had been approved, with fraudulent information being the primary reason for just 55,000 rejections.
Judge Hanen, the judge who initially upheld the legal challenge from 26 states led by Texas against the later executive action says the approval rate proves that the President is not just issuing priority guidelines in order to carry out current laws, but actually attempting to write new policy, an opinion shared by the most of the Fifth Circuit Court. The Center for Immigration Studies’ executive director, Mark Krikorian, says the program is “rubber-stamping” the applications, adding that a 93 percent approval rate for a program that had already been running four years clearly “doesn’t have very high standards”.
The DAPA case would allow undocumented immigrants whose children hold US citizenship to stay and work legally in the United States. Oral arguments are set to be heard by the Supreme Court next month.