Trump boosts Dreamer approvals as DACA deadline passes.

Monday was supposed to be the deadline either when illegal immigrant Dreamers began to lose their status under the Trump administration’s phaseout of the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty, or when Congress would swoop to the rescue and grant them a path to full citizenship rights.

Instead, the week dawns with the program still mostly intact, thanks to the courts. Meanwhile, Congress is stalemated and immigrant rights activists are vowing political retribution on the lot of them — though President Trump takes the brunt of their anger.

“I love the Dreamers,” the president said at a dinner with reporters Saturday. “I’ll be honest. … I really believe the Republicans want to solve this problem — DACA — more than the Democrats and certainly faster. So we’re all working together, and I hope that something’s going to happen. I really do.”

Some lawmakers say they could revisit the issue by March 23, which is when the next spending bill is due. But even then, it’s not clear what a deal would look like, with neither House conservatives nor congressional Democrats eager to meet at Mr. Trump’s middle ground.

Under the Obama administration, nearly 96.8 percent of Dreamers applying to renew their two-year permits were approved. Under the Trump administration, the approval rate has reached a stunning 98.9 percent.

The Trump administration announced the phaseout of the program on Sept. 5, saying it had concluded the program was unconstitutional, couldn’t be defended in court and needed to be wound down.

So far, interest has been moderate.

From Jan. 10 to Jan. 31, some 11,360 people had applied for renewals.

Perhaps more stunning is that the Trump administration still has nearly 22,000 DACA requests from people who have never been approved for the program. Since initial DACA requests were cut off on Sept. 5, that means those people had been waiting for at least five months.

Fewer than 150 were approved from Oct. 1 to Jan. 31. Although the Trump administration has been generous with its renewals, it has been more strict with initial applications, with an approval rate below 80 percent. The Obama administration notched an initial approval rate of more than 92 percent from 2012 through the end of 2016.

Homeland Security officials insist nothing has changed, and they are processing the applications under normal prioritization and in accordance with the same rules as before.

As of Jan. 31, some 683,000 people were being protected by DACA. All told, since the beginning of the program more than 807,000 people had been approved. But about 125,000 of them either allowed their status to lapse, found some other legal avenue to remain in the U.S. or — in about 2,000 cases — had their DACA protections canceled because of criminal or gang activities.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...-not-congress/

renewals are being processed at a much faster rate than ever before but initial apps received in September last year are still pending

"Although the Trump administration has been generous with its renewals, it has been more strict with initial applications, with an approval rate below 80 percent."

extreme vetting i suppose for the initial applications?

Glad we are still in the news

Activist groups will be pressuring Dems to grow some balls and get a better deal. If Dems are still stubborn about that, the only hope I have is for Trump to back off most of his demands.

We all have our opinions about Trump, but at least he is keeping the DACA conversation in the news and alive. People keep saying this is about his wall, personally I believe is bigger than that, and that’s the Hispanic votes.

I do believe that he is trying to wake up the Hispanic community by telling them that enough is enough and the Democrats have been using them as political pawns the last couple of years without giving them any real results.

This should be a wake up call for the Dems! The last president to grant amnesty was a Republican, and if they loose the DACA battle they will face a backlash within the Hispanic community.

No shit. The majority of “apples” have been slowly weeded out of the program over the last few renewals. Also, people whose commitment any type of activity that could disqualify them from the program are now too scare to try and renew. The longer the program runs the higher re-approval rating (if the same metrics remain)..” crème de la crème” is what remains of DACA

You think the guy who's holding DACA hostage so that he can pass his racist POS anti-immigration bill-, oh, excuse me, "merit-based" immigration bill is trying to vie for the Hispanic vote? GTFOH.

No, I'm not saying that. Trump is. To your face. While you're too busy parroting his inane bullshit to notice it.

You fail to realize that Democrats refuse to get a better deal because they refuse to use their leverage on the issue. Logically, Trump will try to milk the shit out of Democrats if they put themselves in a weak position, which they did by giving up all their leverage on spending.

I can guarantee you right now that the majority of dreamers are actually fed up with Democrats pushing back the issue when it is evidently clear they can get a better deal now if they use their leverage.

Republicans will be assholes. What's new? The very frustrating thing is Democrats HAVE NOT grown any balls and can bridge the gap here to get a good deal. But, no, coincidence that they willingly give up leverage, reject all offers from Trump, and try to shift the blame on him (granted Trump is an asshole)? They want us for the election and do not want to give Trump a win on the issue. Dems will never admit this, but you can clearly decipher their objectives from their cowardly behavior.

Fuck partisan politics and who gets the victory. You can call your offspring Schumer and Durbin for all I care. Nobody really gives a fuck about partisan politics, especially when both parties are at fault for something. We just want the issue resolved now. Dems need to force a fucking bridge on the gap and stop using us for the election.

Sir that was beautiful.

First of all relax, take a Xanax or something. No one is defending his actions, I have said it from the beginning that both sides have something to gain from this. Both sides are holding us hostages, not one side will try to fix this issue because they “love us” so don’t get it twisted and make yourself believe that there is one good side and one bad side because at the end of the day, they are both the same.

However, you can’t deny the fact that he could have taken our permits away from day one with a stroke of a pen. His anti-immigration rethoric is something he campaign on, so his actions as a president are not breaking news to me. You have to understand that he doesn’t owe you anything, he never campaigned for you or for any of us, he was straight forward on how he felt regarding DACA and the fact that he’s at least trying to keep the conversation alive is noteworthy.