Small Business Owners and the Status of DACA Employees
.
C, The Effort to End the Program
On or about September 5, 2017, the new administration U.S. Attorney General announced that no new DACA applications would be accepted or processed.
By way of an executive order, the President directed that the program would end on March 5, 2018. DACA work permits were not revoked but would not be extended beyond their expiration dates, except that work permits expiring prior to March 5 could be extended for another two years. Following September 5, 2017, the U.S Government announced that DACA recipients would no longer be able to travel outside the U.S.
Proponents of the Administration’s policy argued that terminating the program in favor of Congressional legislation was necessary because Congress, not President Obama, had the authority to create such a program. Critics argued that the Administration was simply acting out its anti-immigrant platform.
D. The Coming of the Lawsuits
With the failure of Congress to enact any remedial legislation, a number of lawsuits were filed seeking to stay rescission of the program on the basis that President Trump’s own executive order terminating DACA, itself, violated the U.S. Constitution and a range of Federal laws.
On or about January 9, 2018, the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in the case—The Regents of the University of California v. United States Department of Homeland Security—issued a nationwide stay against the President’s executive order.
Among its several determinations, the District Court, finding that there had existed a long history of DHS’s implementing deferred action programs, disagreed with the rationale advanced by the Department of Homeland Security that enacting the DACA program fell outside its authority.
Subsequent to the nationwide injunction issued by the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of California, the Trump Administration petitioned the U.S. Supreme
Court to review the case. The Supreme Court rejected the petition, finding that the case needed first to be appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in San Francisco.
As such, notwithstanding efforts by the Trump Administration to phase out the program, DACA continues to be in place pending further consideration by the courts.
Related articles:
6 Smart Hiring Guidelines of Foreign National Employees
