The Department of Homeland Security has bent under progressive pressure and will allow a few hundred DACA illegals to refile their delayed-in-the-mail applications for their DACA amnesty extension.

The decision was announced Wednesday evening and was justified as a decent concession to a small number of applicants whose too-late applications were delayed by the mail service after prior statements had said the late applications would not be accepted.  

Under President Donald Trump’s plan, roughly one-quarter of the 690,000 DACA applicants were allowed to file for a two-year extension of their DACA work-permits before October 5. The deadline was expected to soften protests by business and Democrats as the program heads towards elimination in 2019. Roughly 300,000 DACA illegals will lose their work permits before November 2018. 

But progressives cheered the DHS reversal as a more–boosting victory in their campaign to rush a no-strings amnesty for millions of unskilled ‘dreamer’ illegals through Congress in December:

According to vox.com, a pro-amnesty outlet:

At least 18,000 immigrants are going to lose their DACA protections because they didn’t apply for renewal in time at all (possibly because they didn’t know about the October 5 deadline, which was announced only a month in advance, and which immigrants weren’t informed by the government about). At least some of the 4,000 late applications probably aren’t eligible to be reconsidered. And, of course, it’s not at all clear how stingy USCIS will be in actually approving DACA renewal applications on the merits…

But now the administration is taking a less aggressive stance toward stripping DACA recipients of the protections they currently have. And it’s no longer using “the rule of law” to penalize immigrants who, when applying for one last DACA renewal, did all the right things.

The reversal comes as groups of GOP Senators and House members huddle to develop their own DACA-related plans, and as business groups, Democrats and media allies lobby for huge and open-ended ‘Dream Act’ amnesty. Both groups of legislators are weighing whether to push a cheap-labor amnesty that would be cheered by Dmeocrats but opposed by voters or to push a pro-voter plan that would package a cut to annual immigration numbers with a limited DACA extension.

Democrats are pushing for the huge and hugely expensive Dream Act for 3.6 million illegals, which would allow the new immigrants to also bring in millions of their homeland chain-migration relatives, regardless of their job skills, health, age or ideology. Democrats support the continued mass-immigration because the vast majority of lower-skilled immigrants vote Democratic. 

But voters strongly oppose cheap-labor amnesties. In 2014, voters blocked the Democratic-backed “Gang of Eight” cheap-labor and amnesty bill and then flipped nine Democratic Senate seats to the GOP. In 2016, the voters showed their anger over immigration by picking a pro-American real-estate developer for the presidency. 

Many legislators do not understand public attitudes about immigration, in part, because their usual pollsters also being paid by their business clients to tout an amnesty. These industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls are skewed to show that Americans want to welcome migrants. But other “fairness” polls show that voters also put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy. 

The political significance of the DHS reversal is unclear. Nonetheless, the apparent reversal was lamented by pro-American immigration reformers.

The DHS statement said:

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has received reports that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has identified USPS mail service delays that affected a number of DACA renewal requests. Because the DACA policy has been rescinded and individuals can no longer request deferred action under DACA, and in light of the mail service delays identified by USPS, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke has directed USCIS to accept DACA renewal requests from individuals who resubmit their DACA renewal request with individualized proof that the request was originally mailed in a timely manner and that the cause for receipt after the Oct. 5, 2017, deadline was the result of USPS mail service error. Affected DACA requestors who do not have such proof may contact USPS, which will review the cases on an individual basis and provide a letter if appropriate. USCIS will not accept requests that do not include individualized proof that the request was originally mailed in a timely manner to be received by the October 5 deadline, and that the cause for receipt after the Oct. 5, 2017, deadline was the result of USPS mail service error.

In addition, USCIS had discovered certain cases in which the DACA requests were received at the designated filing location (e.g., at the applicable P.O. Box) by the filing deadline, but were rejected. USCIS will proactively reach out to those DACA requestors to inform them that they may resubmit their DACA request. If a DACA requestor does not receive such a notification and believes that his or her DACA request was received at the designated filing location by the filing deadline, he or she may resubmit his or her DACA request with proof that the request was previously received at the designated filing location on or before the filing deadline.

Additional guidance is forthcoming.