PolitiFact deems Paxton’s claim that DACA confers citizenship status as “ridiculous”
Austin, TX – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been at the forefront against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and has continually made the false claim that by enacting DACA, President Obama was conferring citizenship for Dreamers unilaterally.
But as PolitiFact notes, “It’s flat-out incorrect to say that Obama via DACA conferred citizenship on anyone. That’s not how the system works, and the attorney general should know better.”
And as immigration attorney David Leopold notes in the piece, Attorney General Paxton’s claim is “a gross mischaracterization” of DACA.
Mario Carrillo, State Director of America’s Voice Texas issued the following statement:
Paxton’s threat to sue the Administration if it didn’t end DACA has been proven once more to be nothing but a political stunt. Continually making false claims about the program pushed President Trump to end DACA, and leave the lives of nearly 800,000 young immigrants, many who are now working or in school, in jeopardy. More than 124,000 Texans are DACA-recipients and it’s unfortunate that our Attorney General seems hell-bent on attacking a community that has made Texas prosperous and vibrant for so long.
Below is an excerpt from from the PolitiFact Texas post, and you can read the entire piece here.
The lead lawyer for Texas state government hailed President Donald Trump’s rescission of predecessor Barack Obama’s move affording young unauthorized immigrants, sometimes called “Dreamers,” renewable shields from deportation.
Moreover, Attorney General Ken Paxton charged in a Sept. 5, 2017, press release, Obama “used that lawful-presence dispensation to unilaterally confer U.S. citizenship.”
A reader asked us to check on that.
In his release, Paxton said the program that Trump gave Congress six months to restore granted lawful presence and work permits to nearly a million “unlawfully present aliens.”
That’s close to solid. The Pew Research Center recently estimated that fewer immigrants, nearly 790,000 people with roots mostly in Mexico, have received work permits and deportation relief through the Obama-launched Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Yet citizenship wasn’t a declared offering via DACA. The June 2012 Homeland Security memo announcing the program said: “This memorandum confers no substantive right, immigration status or pathway to citizenship. Only the Congress, acting through its legislative authority, can confer these rights.
Follow Mario Carrillo and America’s Voice: Texas on Twitter: @_mariocarrillo_ and @AmericasVoice
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