Who Will Benefit from the Obama “Executive Action”?

The American Immigration Council has written an excellent paper explaining that the primary beneficiaries will be (1) the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (LPR) as well as (2) immigrants who qualify under the expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

President Obama announced in a speech Thursday night that the U.S. will provide temporary protection from deportation for nearly 5 million people. We now know that the primary beneficiaries will be the undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (LPR) as well as immigrants who qualify under the expansion of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Historically, data on undocumented immigrants has been limited, and mostly exclusive to estimates of how many immigrants are in the U.S. without lawful status.

This week, the Migration Policy Institute launched a new data tool and additional estimates on where those who qualify are located by state. Importantly, the tool provides estimates on specific ties to the U.S. that may make an immigrant eligible for relief. For example, the data shows how many individuals ages 15 and older reside with at least one U.S.-citizen child and for how long they have lived in the U.S. Up to 3.7 million undocumented immigrants who are parents U.S. citizens or LPRS have lived in the country for at least five years could be eligible for relief if they also pass a background check and pay any back taxes.

According to Fusion’s Jordan Fabian, “it’s likely to leave the biggest mark in states like California, Texas and New York. And two southern states to which immigrants have flocked over the past decade—North Carolina and Georgia—have hundreds of thousands of residents who could receive relief.”

More complete information is provided in the American Immigration Council’s full article.