Is it worth $232.50 a year and some paperwork for an illegal alien to maintain a legal immigration status in the United States? Or is the near total lack of enforcement of immigration law so pervasive that it is not worth the bother?
Well, USCIS is about to learn the answer to that question, but I doubt if they will share the findings with the rest of us.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is two years old today; and since the non-deportation status for DACA beneficiaries runs for only two years, now is the time for the first DACA aliens to sign up again; all 530,000 or so beneficiaries will have to re-up at some point over the next two years, as the agency announced in today's press release.
The question is: Do aliens think that the privilege of legal status for two years is worth the hassle and the $465 fee? DHS has twice had to postpone the re-registration periods for the somewhat similar, if smaller, Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, apparently because of slow re-registrations (as we reported earlier) and perhaps the same lethargy will affect the DACAs.
USCIS will soon have an answer to the level-of-response question, but given the agency's extreme reluctance to part with statistics — particularly when they may cause embarrassment — I doubt that we will learn anything soon.
My sense is that anything short of a 90 percent re-registration rate will give the program a black eye, but do not hold your breath waiting for meaningful data on the subject.