Few DACA questions

1. Could applying for and using Advance Parole increase my chances of getting a green card through an employer? I already have I-94 but one of my friend told me there is a loophole.

2. Could applying for and using Advance Parole increase my chances of getting a green card through an employer? my EAD expires in July 2025 and I always apply six months in advance. But Trump taking the office could possibly lead to halting the renewal process?

3. What are your recommendations for DACA recipients given the uncertainty in the coming years?

(dont need to answer all the questions)

I am curious about this too! Many seem to be going for AP, but if marriage is not an option, what other paths are there? I have not told my employer of my situation, have you? Reactions?

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.

Just to correct this, AP does NOT overwrite the K-2 entry. If you entered in as K-2, and did not adjust with the original petitioner, the only way to get a green card is through consular processing, which means I-601A route.

For the immigration point of view, they view the parole and visa entries differently. Parole cannot overwrite the legal visa entry, so for K-2 after using AP, you are still considered as a K-2 Visa overstay.

Alright that's good to know. I'll edit the post to reflect that. Thanks.

Thankful for all of this information. Looks like unless I have marriage on the horizon (which I do not), AP is basically not going to help me in terms of employment sponsorship. I arrived in 1986 (about a year old) without inspection and have not left since.

Does this mean that everyone seeking AP now has the amount of time DACA survives to adjust status to avoid accruing unlawful days again?

Basically, though aside those who got it while under 18.5 it won't matter much.

Also, you came in 1986, did either parent get sponsored sometime during the time period before 245(i) went away?

Demise, is there a possibility that the Trump administration would just leave DACA and let the litigation hash it out and eventually SCOTUS rule on it?

Judge Hanen already ruled it as no good but let current beneficiaries continue renewing. Do you think SCOTUS could rule the same and leave it in place for current beneficiaries because if you ax the program outright, it would cause capricious harm to current beneficiaries?

I mean is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Fuck no. Best we could hope for is DACA termination getting tied up in a bunch of lawsuits again until it's election season again.

Like most people just fail to realize how utterly lucky we were the first time around when the termination lawsuits got tied up until mid 2020 where at height of covid nobody really gave a shit about DACA.

Is it fair to say when SCOTUS rules on it that Chief Justice Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett will be on our side? I have a felling it will be a 5-4 decision again. I wish though..