United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday revokes a programme that protects immigrants who arrived in the country as kids from deportation, Reuters reported. The move will affect up to 7,000 Indian Americans.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, a policy framed during the administration of former US President Barack Obama, protects nearly 8,00,000 people called “Dreamers” from deportation and allows them to work and study legally in the country.
The Trump administration said no new applicants will be accepted, however, no current beneficiaries of the programme will be affected until March 5, 2018. The Congress has been given six months time to enact new protections from the immigrants through legislation.
“Congress, get ready to do your job – DACA!” Trump wrote on Twitter before the announcement was made.
US Attorney General Jeff Session said the policy being rescinded does not mean that the Daca recipients, also known as the “Dreamers” are “bad people”. “It means we are properly enforcing out laws as Congress has passed them,” he said.
“To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here,” Sessions said, according to Reuters. “It is just that simple. That would be an open-border policy and the American people have rightly rejected that.”
A majority of the Dreamers come from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. More than 200,000 live in California, and nearly 100,000 live in Texas, Mirror reported. As per the policy, applicants under the age of 30 could obtain temporary permits for work and study. They had to submit their personal information to the Department of Homeland Security and go through a background check for criminal records.
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