Since last November when Donald Trump secured the presidency, the subject of immigration has been anything but stable. From a mega border wall to the travel exclusion of entire countries, immigration policy has been up in the air. What would actually happen under President Trump?
One near certainty, however, was that Obama’s DACA policy would end. Sure enough, the president expects to eliminate the program one year from now. In the meantime, DACA recipients are struggling to figure out what to do.
Last October was the deadline for DACA recipients to renew their status to stay in the United States. However, the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rejected many applications that arrived late. Now, they have decided to reconsider late DACA renewal applications.
In fact, a majority of late applications were of no fault by the DACA recipients. Instead, the mail service was too slow to deliver the forms on time. Most government services have a rule that you must mail out any forms with a deadline by the due date. This application, however, had to arrive before the due date.
As a way of backtracking, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will require evidence that the application was sent on time, but failed to arrive before the deadline. This may be hard for some DACA recipients to prove.
Because DACA affects an enormous part of immigrants’ lives, a rejection can be scary to receive. Texas DACA recipients who believe they were wrongfully rejected may consult an immigration lawyer to help them maintain DACA status.