From [HERE] and [HERE] Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children will be able to obtain work permits and be safe from deportation under a new policy announced on Friday by the Obama administration.

The US Department of Homeland Security  issued a directive on Friday saying that it will stop deporting many illegal immigrants under the age of 30 who were brought to the US as children. In the memorandum, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano  declared that the DHS would exercise what it termed "prosecutorial discretion" toward undocumented immigrants who were under 16 years old when they entered the US, have continuously resided in the US for at least five years, have graduated high school or served in the armed forces, have not committed a crime and are under the age of 30. Napolitano said that the DHS policy directive is necessary to ensure that the nation's immigration laws are enforced justly:

Our Nation's immigration laws must be enforced in a strong and sensible manner. They are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language. Indeed, many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways. Prosecutorial discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here.

In the memorandum, Napolitano also clarified that the DHS directive does not create any new immigration status or pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

These qualifications resemble in some ways those of the so-called Dream Act, a measure blocked by Congress in 2010 that was geared to establish a path toward citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants. The administration's action on Friday, which stops deportations but does not offer citizenship or even permanent legal status, is being undertaken by executive order and does not require legislation.

What the younger immigrants will obtain, officials said, is the ability to apply for a two-year "deferred action" that effectively removes the threat of deportation for up to two years, with repeated extensions. "This is not immunity, it is not amnesty," said Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, which oversees immigration enforcement. "It is an exercise of discretion."

People whose deferrals are approved will then be able to apply for work permits, which will be dealt with case by case, officials said. They estimated that the new policy would cover about 800,000 people.

The decision highlighted the importance of Latino voters to Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign. Many of the states in which the election will be decided — Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia among them — have large and growing Hispanic populations.

Mr. Obama’s action falls short of what some advocates have been seeking from an overhaul of the immigration system, and some Hispanic leaders have expressed disappointment that he has not done more.

But the new policy represents a sharp contrast to the tone the Republican candidates for president took on the issue during the primary season, when Mitt Romney, now the party's presumptive nominee, opposed the Dream Act and took a hard line against illegal immigration. [MORE]