On Thursday night President Obama will address the nation and issue an executive order on immigration that will lift the threat of deportation for millions of illegal immigrants. The president has stated he wants to “fix the broken immigration system.”
This unilateral action by the president has the potential to poison any bipartisan agreements between Republicans and the president, this after the midterm elections where Democrats and the president’s policies were soundly rejected.
The president is on the verge of announcing changes that “will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue, and many others,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, said in a statement Wednesday.
The president is arguing that he is using the same executive authority used by Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Alexis Simendinger writing in Real Clear Politics wrote, In Obama’s view, when House Republicans declined to take up any immigration legislation this year after considering a Senate-passed measure and House alternatives, his hand had to be played, regardless of the fact that he’d previously denied he had the constitutional powers to act alone.
During his first term the president postponed a White House push for immigration reform until after his re-election. In June 2012 he decided, after considerable pressure from Latino groups, to use his executive discretion to invite hundreds of thousands of so-called “DREAMers” — migrants who came to the United States illegally as children with relatives — to apply for deportation relief. Close to 800,000 people have sought the two-year temporary status, which can be renewed for another two years.
Many Republican mentioned he campaigned in 2008, he would submit comprehensive immigration reform in his first year in office, this was at a time when Democrats had a super majority in the House and a veto proof majority in the Senate; but no immigration related bill was submitted.
The White House has not released details of the president’s executive action but many expect it to include action on a temporary amnesty for over 4 million illegal immigrants.
An elimination of the age limit for the temporary amnesty the president issued in 2012 for those who came to the U.S. as minors. The executive action doesn’t plan to provide government sponsored health care.
Other elements are to include the elimination of checking fingerprints of all inmates within the Department of Homeland Security for immigration status. The business community wants included in the executive action adding an additional number of H1-B visas for high tech workers.
The final aspect is unspecified border security measures to reduce border crossings will be included in the presidents executive action.
When the president issues his executive order it will only be effective until the next president takes office in 2017, at that point whoever the new president is can abolish Obama’s executive action or retain it. Either way comprehensive immigration reform is dead for the next two years.
No matter what the president unveils on Thursday night it will make the lame duck session of Congress and the new Congress more polarized than ever before.
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