index

In a virtual bombshell announcement President Obama plans to issue a broad executive order as early as next week to overhaul the nation’s U.S. immigration policy, which would protect up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

MSN reported the president is asserting his authority as president to enforce the nation’s laws with discretion, Mr. Obama intends to order changes that will significantly refocus the activities of the government’s 12,000 immigration agents. One key piece of the order, officials said, will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away.

MSN added in reporting part of Mr. Obama’s plan alone could affect as many as 3.3 million people who have been living in the United States illegally for at least five years, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration research organization in Washington. But the White House is also considering a stricter policy that would limit the benefits to people who have lived in the country for at least 10 years, or about 2.5 million people.

The president has been getting extreme pressure by Democratic lawmakers to take this executive action.  The Congressional Progressive Caucus calls on President Obama to provide comprehensive relief to immigrants residing in our nation through executive action.  Expansive and robust action that addresses the economic, family, community and national problems we now face is urgently needed.  Republican s in Congress have made it clear they will not engage in a good faith effort to fix our broken immigration system. The president has the legal authority and moral imperative to provide relief for over 7 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the shadows.

President Obama has taken a beating from Hispanic groups over immigration as they remember all too well how he had promised to “put comprehensive immigration reform back on the nation’s agenda during my first year in office.”  This was at a time when the House had 257 Democrats and the Senate had a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Democrats.  No immigration reform was submitted or even proposed.

On June 30th while speaking in the Rose Garden, the president stated he would use executive action if the Republicans didn’t act on immigration reform.

“Because of the Republicans’ extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections,” a White House official said. “Because he wants to do this in a way that’s sustainable, the president will take action on immigration before the end of the year.”

In September, President Obama issued a stunning reversal that he would delay any executive action on immigration until after November’s midterm election in an effort to protect vulnerable Senate Democrats.

As was reported by CNN, in an interview by NBC’s Chuck Todd, Obama said the immigration debate was affected by concerns over the large number of unaccompanied children from Latin America flocking to the U.S. border.

“The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift mid-summer because of that problem,” he said.

“What I’m saying is that I’m going to act because it’s the right thing for the country,” Obama said. “But it’s going to be more sustainable and more effective if the public understands what the facts are on immigration, what we’ve done on unaccompanied children and why it’s necessary.”

Now with the shellacking the President and Democrats took in last week’s midterm election they need to shore up their standing in the Hispanic community which is a crucial Democratic bloc.

The Pew Research Center reported even though immigration is not the top issue for Latinos, it remains an important one. Two-thirds (66%) of Latino registered voters say passing new immigration legislation soon is extremely or very important, according to the center’s 2014 National Survey of Latinos.

Pew Research Center continued, It’s not clear whether President Obama’s executive action delay on immigration swayed Hispanic voters one way or the other. Obama did not deliver on a promise to offer deportation relief to some of the 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. by September, instead pushing any action to after the election.

Nonetheless, there is potential for Hispanics to impact elections. Latinos have played an important role – twice – in helping President Obama win the presidency. In 2016, if the battleground states for president remain the same as during the Obama years, the impact of the Latino vote is expected to be more significant.

In Politico Republican House Speaker John Boehner stated Obama is, “playing with fire, and when you play with fire, you get burned.”

“I told the president last week directly: ‘If you proceed with executive amnesty, not only can you forget about getting immigration reform enacted during your presidency, you can also expect it to jeopardize other issues as well,’” Boehner said, according to a source in the room. “We don’t know when exactly he’ll do it or how exactly he’ll do it. But if he proceeds, we are going to fight it.”

If the president goes through with his executive action it will surely be an extremely contentious lame duck Congress and be a contentious final two years of the Obama presidency.

The question is how will the public respond?