When the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy was announced in 2012, I repeatedly heard that two million would benefit. The bottom line has been far smaller: as of March 2014, 673,000 requests were filed, and just 553,000 approved.
I hasten to add that this is better than I would have expected back in 2011. But it underscores the fact that we shouldn’t take aspirational numbers at face value.
Prove me wrong, Obama. Prove me wrong.
Nov 20 2014
If you judge a book's quality by how frequently you come back to it or think about it, Daniel Klein's Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation is a very good book. I keep pulling it off the shelf for different things. This is a deep and provocative treatment of things economists usually take for granted: wi...
Nov 20 2014
"I want to ask a question. What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law. Great Britain does not punish gambling. This is not a loophole; it is a British law. The income-tax exemptions in our income tax are not loopholes. ...
Nov 20 2014
When the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy was announced in 2012, I repeatedly heard that two million would benefit. The bottom line has been far smaller: as of March 2014, 673,000 requests were filed, and just 553,000 approved. I hasten to add that this is better than I would have expected back...
READER COMMENTS
Tim Ozenne
Nov 20 2014 at 9:22am
How does one count those who enter under DACA but never show up for their court date? Are they included in the 673,000?
Yancey Ward
Nov 20 2014 at 12:20pm
The numbers were lower than the worse case scenario precisely because DACA is not written into law. Any future president can undo it, and even the 553,000 aren’t permanent residents or on a path to citizenship- they are still considered illegal residents. Under those circumstances, I, too, am surprised the number who took up the “offer” was so high.
LD Bottorff
Nov 20 2014 at 6:06pm
Yancey’s point is excellent. This has a great political benefit to actual help ratio. Very few will sign up for it because they fear that in a few years the order will be rescinded and their names will be on the government records. However, citizens who are sympathetic to the plight of the undocumented workers will see this as a reason to support the Democrats and hate the Republicans. Great policy for Democrats. Bad policy for undocumented immigrants.
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