[Blog]

So we have been really busy with people coming in to take advantage of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. I have met with lots of children, young adults, and their parents. So far, we don’t have any decisions, but for what its worth, the receipt notices and biometrics notices are all coming in very quickly. According to reports, some approvals are ready to go out (here's hoping some are ours!).

The requirements are fairly straight forward, but because there are no decisions yet to review, no Requests for Evidence, and not all of our questions answered yet, our advice is not at all cookie cutter. We need to carefully review all criminal issues, including tickets, juvenile offenses, trips abroad, and pore over sometimes hundreds of pages of documents to determine eligibility and more importantly (sometimes) whether it makes sense for the individual to risk filing. Sometimes our advice has been to wait and see how the cases are being decided before taking such risks. 

As part of the process, we have to ask why they need employment authorization, and the answers are almost universally so that they can continue their education, advance their careers, and/or pay their fair share of family expenses. Most of the students wanted to become Nurses, or go into education programs they can’t get into right now because of a lack of documents, such as Architecture, Engineering, Law School, etc. I am amazed at some of the kids who I have seen who volunteered their time, helped out at home with their siblings, worked part-time, and still made straight A’s. We look forward to finally getting some approvals soon.