LAUSR

ABSTRACT In this chapter I ask whether the 2012 Presidential Executive Order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) improved the rates of employment and college attendance for unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children. DACA gave temporary residency status to this group, known as “Dreamers.” “Dreamer” stands for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, a bill that has languished in a divided U.S. Congress since 2001. It refers to an unauthorized foreign-born person brought into the United States prior to his or her sixteenth birthday. My focus is on the Mexican-born, who constitute some 80 percent of Dreamers and who (given their low socioeconomic status) are among the least likely to assimilate into U.S. society. I employ data on educational attainment and work experience from the American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 1 percent samples for 2012 and 2014, to address this research question. The results suggest both that palpable progress has been made, and that state politics still impede the incorporation of undocumented youth in certain areas of the country. Although state and local policies have changed for the better since 2014, the prospects for a continuation of federal relief via DACA, and via Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and other executive orders for prosecutorial discretion regarding undocumented family members of Dreamers, as of early 2017, appeared problematic indeed.