How many illegal aliens have benefitted from former President Barack Obama’s DACA amnesty? That’s a question that should get a closer review.
A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) report (page 6) dated September 4 on the numbers of illegal aliens with “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival” (DACA) status in each state does not match with the number of DACA recipients to whom Georgia says it has issued a drivers license.
USCIS has the national total number of DACA recipients at 689,800, with 21,600 of these victims of borders living in Georgia.
But a recent response letter from Gov. Nathan Deal’s Commissioner of the Department of Driver Services (DDS) to Georgia state Sen. Josh McKoon puts the number of drivers licenses and official state ID Cards issued to DACA at 48,935 — more than twice as many as the feds say live in the Peach State. And that was as of August 8th.
DDS says it has has also issued some 8,700 official photo ID Cards to DACA “children.” An individual can legally obtain both the drivers license and ID Card.
Which number is accurate? Jeremy Redmon is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Institute for Justice and Journalism on Immigration Reporting – trained immigration reporter. He uses the federal numbers in a Friday news item that also breaks down the stats offered for the Atlanta-metro area.
There is a lot of confusion in Georgia on the topic in general. In 2015 email, the DDS Public Information Director explained to a InsiderAdvantage Georgia that DDS policy on deferred action was “per the federal DREAM Act”, which did not pass Congress.
And DDS has been telling state legislators for years that they don’t issue drivers licenses or ID Cards to “undocumented or illegal immigrants.” They stick to “non-citizens with lawful status” or “non-citizens with lawful presence.” It has become quite a sensitive issue for the DDS lobbyist in the state Capitol.
The po-tay-to/po-tah-to word-play comes from the fact that the 2012 USCIS website explaining DACA clearly says “deferred action on deportation does not provide lawful status.”
But, the REAL ID Act of 2005 (2) (B) (vii) says deferred action status is “evidence of lawful status.” Got that?
The Georgia DDS uses the REAL ID Act definition, but a growing number of Georgians are waking up to the fact that only illegal aliens require deferred action on deportation. And that in real-speak, illegal aliens – including illegals who do not have deferred action and who are already under deportation orders – are being issued the same REAL ID Act-approved driver’s license that is given to legal immigrants and guest workers here on a temporary visas.
These driver’s licenses are used to board airliners literally every day at airports all over the country, including here in Atlanta.
It also surprises a lot of people to learn that according to DHS, Georgia has more illegal aliens than Arizona.
We think the discrepancy in the stated numbers of DACA beneficiaries from federal authorities and the database of the Georgia agency in charge of the integrity of our driving and ID credentials is worthy of an official explanation.
You read it here first.
D.A. King is a pro-enforcement immigration activist and president of the Dustin Inman Society