Central Coast community reacts to Biden Administration’s move to formalize DACA

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – The Central Coast community is reacting to the Biden administration’s finalized rule for DACA.

The BIden administration’s move to protect daca from legal challenges brings relief to non-profit organization ‘CAUSE.’

“Hopefully this provides a little more security you know for folks who unfortunately have been used as a political football,” said Policy Director Lucas Zucker.

But advocates say they would like to see this go further, by covering more immigrants.

“And ultimately really, the long term solution is that congress needs to take action to make a pathway to citizenship,” said Zucker.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration services reports over 175,000 DACA recipients are in California.

2,760 of them are in Santa Barbara County. 

Meanwhile, the California Republican Party says the biden administration has a horrible record on immigration.

“This is just a band-aid on the program,” said Treasurer Greg Gandrud. “Really what the biden administration should be doing is working in a bi-partisan manner, with both Republicans and Democrats.”

Republicans say the administration should work with both parties on comprehensive immigration reform and other pressing issues, such as inflation and high gas prices. 

“But we need to look at it in a more comprehensive way so we are really fixing a very very broken immigration system,” said Gandrud. “We have a border. We have close to five million people entering the United States illegally through the biden administration.”

The new rule takes effect Oct. 31st.