DHS Creates DACA 2.0 for 'Special Immigrant Juveniles'
Work permits now available to certain illegal aliens who claim parental abuse or abandonment
By Robert Law on March 15, 2022
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has revised the Special Immigrant Juvenile (SIJ) program in ways that effectively transform it into another version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Combined, the new regulation and policy disregard congressional intent and will allow hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to immediately obtain work permits and will further fuel the surge of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) being smuggled across the southern border.
Congress created the SIJ classification in 1990 to provide a pathway to legal status for certain alien children in the U.S. foster care system who required judicial intervention to protect the minor from parental abuse, abandonment, or neglect. But as my colleague Jessica Vaughan put it, “the [implementing] rules were written with loopholes that you can drive a truck through.” The Obama administration realized that illegal alien minors were increasingly targeting the SIJ program solely for the purpose of obtaining lawful immigration status and not due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment by the parents, and proposed a rule in 2011 to curb such abuses.
The Trump administration reopened the comment period in 2019 and finished the final rule in October 2020, but the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) failed to conclude review (government lingo for "approve") before President Biden’s inauguration. In a February 1, 2021, post, I urged the Biden administration to finalize that SIJ rule.
https://cis.org/Law/DHS-Creates-DACA-20-Special-Immigrant-Juveniles
