By: Jessica Kline, GALEO Student Intern
In recent months the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) funding bill has been the talk of the nation, bringing up a division of opinions in regards to immigration. On the 3rd of March, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill to fund the Department through September 30th, ending what the Washington Post referred to as a, “tense three-month showdown.” With a diverse span of opinions on the topic and months of discussion, many are still asking how we got here and what this means for the immigrant community.
The debate over the new bill became controversial when many Republicans aimed to use it in order to defund President Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which extended both the Deferred Action For Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) Programs. The funding for DHS was set to expire on Friday, February 27th and when an agreement could not be reached on that day, the Senate passed a one-week extension on its funding. On the same day the Senate also passed a clean funding bill, one that would not stop Obama’s executive actions on immigration, with little hopes that it would make it through the House. However on the following Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner passed the clean bill with a vote of 257-167, with the consenting majority consisting of all of the Democratic and 75 of the Republican representatives.
While the passing of this bill represents a victory for the immigrant community, the expanded DACA and DAPA programs are still on hold due to a lawsuit filed by a Texas-led coalition of 26 states. The case was filed against the Obama administration, claiming that the executive actions on immigration were unconstitutional. On February 16th, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen gave a preliminary injunction on the case, meaning that only those who applied for the programs prior to that date were approved. Judge Hanen also held a hearing on March 19th to further discuss the pending lawsuit and the 100,000 people who received DACA following the injunction under the 2012 guidelines, which were not affected by the lawsuit. The Obama administration is working to appeal the decision and the temporary block on the programs.
Although renewal applications from people who qualified for DACA under the 2012 guidelines are still being accepted, according to the Latin Post the lawsuit is preventing about 4.9 million undocumented immigrants from receiving deferred action as well as, “the opportunity to obtain work permits, [participate] in the job market or [continue] their education.” The outcome of the lawsuit remains uncertain and with the complexity and confusion throughout this case as well as the DHS funding bill debate, the need for comprehensive immigration reform is only becoming more and more evident.
References:
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-passes-bill-fully-funding-the-department-of-homeland-security/2015/03/03/9d62484a-c1c5-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html
- http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/26/politics/dhs-shutdown-vote-republicans/
- http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/27/senate-passes-clean-dhs-funding-bill/
- http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/03/19/Texas-led-battle-over-Obamas-executive-order-on-immigration-continues/5121426776713/
- http://www.latinpost.com/articles/43733/20150320/immigration-executive-actions-news-lawsuit.htm
“NOTE: The opinions express in this blog are the opinions of the author only. It is not to be assumed that the opinions are those of GALEO or the GALEO Latino Community Development Fund. For the official position on any issue for GALEO, please contact Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director of GALEO at jerry@2014old.galeo.org.”