Why Many Immigrants Are Aging Out of the DACA Program

Austin Kocher, research assistant professor at Newhouse with the Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), was interviewed by NPR’s Morning Edition, “New rule shields DACA from being challenged in court.”

Kocher explains this new rule saying, “So by putting the original DACA policy into a rule, it takes the criteria, which at the time was, you know, individuals had to be in the country since 2007, had to be continuously in the United States for five years up until the time that the policy was announced in 2012 – but it doesn’t change the dates for any of those. So it does provide a measure of security for the more than 600,000 DACA recipients currently. But by not expanding it, it really doesn’t provide any additional protection for any new people. And I think one of the most important things to sort of keep in mind here is that that pool of eligible DACA recipients dwindles each year because the dates haven’t moved. So a lot of people are aging out.”