Illegal Immigrants Line Up by Thousands for Deportation Deferrals

THE NEW YORK TIMES

by Steven Yaccino

August 15, 2012

CHICAGO — Long lines of illegal immigrants hoping for the opportunity to stay in the United States without fear of being deported stretched for blocks in cities around the country on Wednesday as they sought to apply for a new federal initiative that allows young immigrants to defer deportation.

The program was announced by President Obama in June, and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency began accepting requests for the first time on Wednesday.

In Chicago, several thousand people lined up at Navy Pier to get information about the initiative and to consult with about 800 volunteers and 60 lawyers working out of offices inside the buildings there. Organizers said that an estimated 11,000 people would have received information about the program by the end of the day.

Maria Rodriguez, 19, who attends a community college in the Chicago suburbs, said she had been waiting since 1 a.m. in a line that eventually stretched the length of the pier.

Ms. Rodriguez, who moved to the United States from Mexico with her family when she was 5, said she had been a honors student in high school but had been unable to accept scholarships to universities because she did not have a Social Security number.

“Finally, I can help pay for my school,” she said. “All my education is going to pay off now. I can actually get a job.”

The initiative allows deportations to be deferred for up to two years for as many as 1.7 million people and grants work permits to illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. The work permits will allow them to obtain a Social Security number, apply for driver’s licenses and receive financial aid at colleges.

But because the deferrals must be renewed after two years — when Mr. Obama may no longer be in office — immigration officials have been unsure how many illegal immigrants would apply.

To be eligible, immigrants must have been under age 31 on June 15, when the program was announced; must have arrived in the country before they were 16; and must have lived in the United States without leaving for at least five years. They must also be enrolled in school, or to have graduated from high school or honorably discharged from the military.

Mr. Obama used his executive authority to announce the program after Congress failed to pass the Dream Act, legislation that he supported and that would have provided a path to citizenship for some young immigrants. The new initiative is seen as an attempt by Mr. Obama to win the support of Latino voters; his administration has deported more than one million immigrants, most of them Latinos, in the past three years.

About 1.2 million foreign-born people are immediately eligible to apply for the program, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. About 500,000 children will soon become eligible for the program.

In general, the illegal immigrants who qualify for the deferrals would also have been covered by the Dream Act. But unlike that proposal and the amnesty program that went into effect in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan, the new initiative, formally called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, suspends deportations but does not confer any legal status on the immigrants or open a path to citizenship.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have said that application information will not be shared with enforcement agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles deportations.