Originally Posted by Demise

Nope, not with employer sponsorship. All AP does is give you a lawful entry, essentially wiping out an entry without inspection if that's how you came in.

So all in all, the only case where it matters is when it comes to adjustment as an immediate relative of a US citizen, that being:
1. Spouse
2. Unmarried child under 21
3. Parent of USC over 21 (saying this because oldest DACAers are 43 right now and there's got to be at least a few who would fall here).
since in those cases things like living or working in US illegally or otherwise violating your status are not a factor, the biggest issue generally is how you entered.

Regarding what happens to DACA, honestly, nobody knows. If they want to be smart about it then they might do notice and comment period, grandfather in the last set of renewals, and take it behind the shed and shoot it. I suspect it might get tied up in court again however the biggest factor was that they violated the Administrative Procedures Act in trying to instantly kill it.

So what options have you got for employer sponsorship, not many, the ones that exist and may or may not apply to you as follows:

245(i): Basically old clemency provision that'd require you, parent (while you were unmarried and under 21), or spouse to have been petitioned in any category on or before April 30th 2001, and if the petition or labor certification was filed after April 14, 1998 also physically present in US on December 21, 2000. If you qualify under this then great, you can adjust in US after including I-485 supplement A and paying an extra $1000 fine.

Then we have the consular options, essentially if you can't AOS you have to do consular processing, however by leaving you might trigger a re-entry ban if you lived in US illegally in excess of 180 days after turning 18. 3 years for over 180 days, 10 years for over 1 year.

So there are some scenarios where you might not have enough unlawful presence to trigger a ban:
1. You got DACA before turning 18 years and 180 days old.
2. You somehow got DACA within 180 days of status expiration (extremely unlikely since you had to be out of status on June 15, 2012, and they didn't start accepting applications until August 15, 2012, however putting it here just because it is technically possible if you expired right before the announcement and were one of the first approved).
3. You were admitted for "Duration of status", basically your I-94 reads "D/S" instead of a concrete expiration date, that's generally for F, J, and M non-immigrants. If that's the case then due to a quirk of regulations you did not accrue any unlawful presence (unless there's a formal finding of such, which means that you applied for something with USCIS or a judge ordered you removed, in those cases the period of unlawful presence starts counting from the following day).

In the above cases you can leave US without getting a re-entry ban, do consular processing, and return to US as a permanent resident.

Then for the ban the only thing that really exists is the I-601A waiver.
In order to qualify for that you need to have a US Citizen or Permanent Resident, Spouse or Parent who's suffer "extreme hardship" from your absence. Not all that impossible, hardest part is generally having such a qualifying relative. In case like this your employer does the whole employment sponsorship process, you pay the fee for DS-260, file I-601A, and if/when that's approved, you file the DS-260, get your interview date, leave US, attend, and return as a permanent resident.



Also, I suspect that your friend might be misunderstanding 245(k), which is a special section for employment sponsorship that lets one adjust after some minor status violations (basically under 180 days of such since last admission, unlawful employment, lapses in status, etc). Lets say you're an F-1 student, you work illegally in US while you're in college, leave for vacation, return, and the re-admission resets that clock. The issue here however is that there's a long standing BIA precedent that parole is not admission for purposes of 245(k). DACA doesn't help for this.

Another problem that outside of the exceptions in 245(i) and 245(k) you have to be in lawful status to adjust via work. This doesn't apply for family based cases, where for example a parolee could adjust via a LPR mother despite not having a status per se and just hanging out due to a period of parole provided that there's no periods of living in US illegally ever.

Yeah it's a giant wall of text, feel free to ask any follow up questions.