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Fed up with the lack of progress on immigration reform in Congress, President Obama plans to use administrative action in the months ahead to address the problems with the nation’s immigration system.

“I will take executive action only when we have a serious problem, a serious issue and Congress chooses to do nothing,” Obama said in the Rose Garden. “And in this situation, the failure of the House Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad for our economy” and bad for the country.”

President Obama spoke last week with Republican House Speaker John Boehner about the passage of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, unfortunately Boehner stated it will not happen this year.

Boehner commented, “In our conversation last week, I told the president what I have been telling him for months: the American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written,” Boehner said in a statement. “Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.”

“America cannot wait forever for them to act,” Obama said. He said he’s launching a new effort to “fix as much of our immigration system as I can, on my own, without Congress.”

The president made his declaration regarding immigration in light of the recent surge of immigrant children from Central America who have flooded the southern border region of the United States.

Border patrol agents have interviewed recent immigrants and many were under a false impression that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) – the 2012 policy, suspends deportation of immigrant children before 2007, but does not apply to the current immigration wave of children.

President Obama has announced a two-step process by having Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder provide available resources to address security at the border. The president stating he’s directed a team to “identify additional actions my administration can take on our own within my existing legal authorities to do what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our immigration system as we can.”

Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said the influx of children across the border “really requires a humanitarian response, not an increase in deportations.”

Both President Obama and Republicans are playing politics with U.S. immigration policy by only appealing to the base of their party without truly articulating a comprehensive immigration policy.

One only has to research the history of immigration to this country, and in each instant it has always been preceded by some internal crisis in the country of origin.

My own father immigrated to America after the devastation of World War II on the European continent to seek a better life, now the same is true of those leaving Mexico and Central America.

The president and Republicans have failed to put forth a comprehensive immigration strategy and have only articulated a partisan strategy that appeals to the base of their prospective party.

The U.S. needs a complex strategy for Mexico and Central America which goes to the heart of the dysfunction in each these countries.

Only then will you stem the flow of immigration into this country.