In administering President Barack Obama's new executive action on immigration, the
Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, the Department of Homeland Security wants to avoid the mistakes Health and Human Services committed implementing Obamacare, the
National Journal reported.
The president announced DAPA on Nov. 20, giving the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of DHS, about 180 days to implement it.
The program will shield from deportation individuals who meet precise requirements that immigration authorities must evaluate and approve. The plan is geared for migrants living in the United States illegally, who are parents of children who are legally in the country.
Immigration officials have several factors in their favor that HHS officials didn't.
They've already implemented, with 60 days advance notice, Obama's June 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA executive order. That gave deportation protection to certain children under 16 years old. Moreover, neither of the signature immigration programs require complicated Healthcare.gov-like online registration.
"Because nothing was automated [for DACA] that oddly enough helped. As government programs go and certainly as immigration programs go, it was quite smooth," said Crystal Williams of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
According to Stephen Legomsky, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services chief counsel at the time, "The DACA implementation was unbelievably smooth and efficient. That was not what I would have predicted," the Journal reported.
Some 1.2 million people qualified for DACA consideration, 55 percent applied, and roughly 585,000 were accepted, the Journal reported.
As immigration authorities prepare to implement the president's new and politically contested signature DAPA immigration plan, both critics and proponents will watching.
"It is kind of a wait-and-see," Williams said. "I can't imagine that it will go as smoothly [as DACA] just because of the bigger numbers, the greater awareness, all those things are going to mean they're going to have some implementation issues.
"But the flip side is DACA was a dry run, and it went well," she told the Journal.