WASHINGTON, DC (April 24, 2013) — Statistics from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service indicate that the agency is rubber-stamping the applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They report that 99.5% of applicants have been approved, which appears to be well above approval rates for other legal programs, which have fraud and rejection rates in the double digits. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) predicts the level of fraud could be significant in what is considered a test run for the much larger amnesty included in the Schumer-Rubio immigration bill.
In the first six weeks of the DACA program, only one out of every 5,000 applications was denied. These numbers are quite worrisome, considering prior CIS research estimated that one quarter of the applications during the 1986 amnesty were fraudulent. The 1986 program had an even tougher application review process that included routine face to face interviews. The question is whether such a limited review process would also occur under the sweeping amnesty bill currently being considered by Congress.
“USCIS should answer public concerns that DACA applicants are not required to prove their claims of eligibility, and that the agency is taking proper care to vet applicants so that unqualified and possibly dangerous individuals will be screened out and removed,” stated Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Moreover, given renewed concern over the national security risks of mass immigration, no large-scale legalization program should be implemented until a thorough quality control and fraud assessment of DACA has been conducted. The stakes for public safety are just too high for us to rush into sweeping reforms.”
A CIS Backgrounder illustrating the lessons learned from 1986 amnesty can be found here: http://cis.org/before-considering-another-amnesty-look-at-ircas-lessons
Contact: Marguerite Telford
202-466-8185, [email protected]