Who Benefits From the White House Immigration Plan?

The announcement of President Obama’s executive action on immigration elicited threats of retaliation from congressional Republicans. Here are some of the winners and losers.

Of the winners, Erika Eichelberger of Mother Jones reports:

Undocumented parents of children who are US citizens or permanent residents: “Undocumented immigrants…see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart,” the president said. “It’s been this way for decades. And for decades, we haven’t done much about it.” His executive action will offer temporary legal status to the undocumented parents of children who are US citizens or permanent residents and allow them to apply for work permits—as long as they have lived in the United States for at least five years, pass a background check, and pay taxes.

DREAMers: The president’s move will broaden the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which had temporarily protected from deportation some 1.2 million young people who were brought into the country illegally as children—as long as they entered the country before June 15, 2007. Now, children who came to the United States before January 1, 2010, will be eligible to apply for deferred-action status. The so-called DREAMers (named after the proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act) can apply for employment visas, though there is no direct path for them to lawful permanent residence or citizenship. To the dismay of immigration activists, the executive action does not extend benefits to the hundreds of thousands of parents of DREAMers.

The losers include undocumented immigrants who arrived during or after 2011, undocumented agricultural workers and immigrant detainees. Of the first group, Eichelberger reports:

Undocumented immigrants who have been here since 2011: The failed Senate immigration bill [that preceded Obama’s action] would have allowed immigrants without papers—and their children and spouses—to apply for provisional legal status, if they have been in the United States since the end of 2011. These immigrants could have eventually applied for citizenship.