Mexico Accounts For 78% Of DACA Applications [Infographic]

Sep 4, 2017 @ 09:05 AM

Niall McCarthy , Contributor
Data journalist covering technological, societal and media topics
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

According to reports, U.S. President Donald Trump is going to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, while giving Congress up to six months to find a legislative alternative. DACA was created through an executive order signed by Barack Obama in August 2012 and it protects hundreds of thousands of young unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Referred to as "Dreamers", unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. before the age of 16 were given a chance to study and work, provided they met certain conditions such as passing an FBI background check, not holding a serious criminal conviction as well as either being enrolled in or having recently graduated from high school.

The U.S. government defers any deportation action against those approved for the program for two years and these benefits can be renewed. Nearly 790,000 young "Dreamers" have enjoyed deportation relief under DACA and since 2012, approximately 800,000 renewals have been issued, according to the Pew Research Center. Even though "Dreamers" represent a fraction of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., Trump vowed to deport all of them during his election campaign. Since then, support for DACA has increased and the six months given to Congress to find a replacement is being viewed as a compromise after Republican lawmakers and business leaders including Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook pressed the president to retain the program.

California has approved 222,795 DACA applications, the highest number in the U.S. by far. Texas came second with 124,300 and Illinois was third with 42,376. As can be seen from the following infographic, young immigrants from Mexico account for the vast majority of DACA applications with 618,342 approved to date. In fact, 78 percent of initial and approved applications have come from Mexico. El Salvador has the second highest number of approved applications with 28,371 while Guatemala comes third with 19,792.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)
Statista

Click link in article for chart.

Origin countries of approved DACA applications to date

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc.../#53a652442601