Most major legislation (apart from budgets) requires a 60 per cent vote to bring a bill or nomination to the floor for a vote in the US Senate.

Senate rules allow a senator or senators filibuster (which allows a lawmaker to literally talk a bill to its death; the longest was by South Carolina Senator J Strom Thurmond who had filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957) unless 'three-fifths of the Senators' (usually 60 out of 100 senators) bring debate to a close by invoking cloture.

In recent years, the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve cloture have failed.

The DACA has been held back because of this.

A spending bill is usually a must-pass bill.

Attaching the DACA policy as a rider to something like an appropriation bill is an effective strategy because to veto or postpone such a bill could delay funding to governmental programs, causing serious problems.

It is doubly effective, as the Indivisible Guide points out, 'because the president lacks line-item veto authority, he must sign the appropriations bill as-is (or reject the entire bill), which means policy riders have a high likelihood of becoming law.'

In 2012, frustrated by the failure of the US Congress to pass a law that would spare undocumented immigrants who were brought to US by their parents when they were children from deportation, then US President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive order.

Under the placeholder program, those eligible for DACA could apply for renewable two-year work visas, obtain a driver's license and live free of the threat of immediate deportation.

But the Donald Trump administration has now rescinded the programme and it intends to wind it down in 6 months unless the US Congress can pass a law in that time to incorporate it.

The DREAM Act stands for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act. It is a bill that was first introduced in the US Congress for a multi-phase process for integrating undocumented minors in the US.

The bill proposed initial conditional residency and, upon meeting further qualifications, permanent residency.

It has since been reintroduced several times, but has failed to pass.

The young Americans who are impacted by this bill are poetically called DREAMers.

The young undocumented Americans who come under purview of the DREAM Act are poetically called DREAMers.

The DACA Network was formed with a friend of mine who is from Mexico and in a similar situation. It was formed in the aftermath of Trump's election last November.

We are actually thinking about changing the name now because some attorneys have said we will be drawing negative attention.

The first effect of DACA for most people will be that work authorisations that will expire. That won't allow people to hold their current jobs. Most of the people in DACA are professionals or have some sort of college education. So, they have jobs with benefits, higher pay.

So, the goal of the DACA Network was to come up with a legal solution.

They might not be able to work at the same employer, but they might be able to do similar work if they incorporate themselves as a legal entity and try to win contracts or jobs.

So, what we are trying to do is come up with a six-week or six-course program or a toolkit so that people who are affected by it can at least figure out some other way to earn a living.

The first course would be on legal subject.

The second course would be on what are your skill sets -- how to write a business plan, where would you go to win contracts. Things to that effect.

We are trying to get attorneys to come up and do a presentation on how do you incorporate yourselves as a business, accountants to come up and do presentations on budgeting and taxes and all of that.

I'd also like to talk about the detention thing, because that's what really relates to immigration and DACA Network is really concerned about it.

A lot of what's been happening -- in the earlier part of the Obama administration and currently in the Trump administration -- is that a lot of the immigrant detention is being done by private companies.

They are contracted with the federal government to run those detention centres and most of them have contracts that say they have to have certain amount of occupancy, so a lot of the detention that happens is because people are being pulled over in certain states because they didn't have a driver's licence or the police asked them for their immigration status because certain states in the US now give the police the right to do so.

The police at most times are profiling as to who they pull over for a traffic stop to ask for their immigration status.