Los Angeles Times
By Christi Parson and Lisa Mascaro
June 30, 2014
Obama announces plan to fix immigration system "as much
... as I can" by executive action
President Obama, saying he’s convinced that House Republicans
will not take action to reform immigration laws this year, vowed Monday to use
his executive authority to “fix as much of our immigration system as I can on
my own, without Congress.”
Obama set an end-of-summer deadline for officials to give him
options for changes he can implement on his own and promised he would “adopt
those recommendations without further delay.”
Democratic lawmakers and advocates who have pushed for
executive action to reduce the number of immigrants being deported say they
expect that Obama will extend temporary legal status to a significant number of
the people who would have qualified under the reform bill that passed the
Senate a year ago.
One of the leading backers of immigration reform, Rep. Luis
V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), who has sharply criticized Obama recently, said Monday’s
statement represented “the president I voted for.”
“The antidote for do-nothingism is doing something, and the
president is doing for the American people what the Republican-controlled
Congress refused to do,” Gutierrez said.
Republican officials said further executive action by Obama
would merely make existing border problems worse. GOP leaders point to the
crisis in Texas, in which thousands of unaccompanied minors from Central
America have arrived at the border in recent weeks, as a reason for Congress to
hold off on passing comprehensive immigration legislation.
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Obama sought to turn
that argument around. The “argument seems to be that because the system's broken,
we shouldn't make an effort to fix it,” Obama said. “It makes no sense. It's
not on the level. It's just politics, plain and simple.”
He also repeated that minors who have arrived in recent
months will be sent back to their countries of origin. Administration officials
have tried to convey that message to the public in Central America, seeking to
combat rumors that the U.S. will allow children to stay if they arrive without
parents.
“The journey is unbelievably dangerous for these kids,” Obama
said. “The children who are fortunate enough to survive it will be taken care
of while they go through the legal process, but in most cases that process will
lead to them being sent back home.”
This spring, Obama asked Homeland Security Secretary Jeh
Johnson to delay submitting a series of recommendations for changing U.S.
deportation practices, hoping that holding off would give House Republicans
time to come up with a legislative package they could support.
But according to the White House version of events, House
Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told Obama last week that his chamber didn’t
plan to act this year.
This is not a situation where these children are slipping
through. Our system is so broken, so unclear, that folks don't know what the
rules are.
In a statement, Boehner said that he had “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. Until that changes, it
is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.”
“The crisis at our southern border reminds us all of the
critical importance of fixing our broken immigration system,” Boehner said. “It
is sad and disappointing that — faced with this challenge — President Obama
won't work with us, but is instead intent on going it alone with executive
orders that can't and won't fix these problems.”
Boehner added that Obama’s previous executive orders “have
led directly to the humanitarian crisis.”
Republicans point to Obama’s decision in 2012 to stop
deportations of some young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as
children. They say that order, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,
had given families in Central America false hope.
Administration officials deny their policies are to blame.
Instead, they say smugglers have taken advantage of a U.S. law, passed in 2008
under President George W. Bush, that guarantees a hearing to unaccompanied
children arriving from Central America and other countries that do not directly
border the U.S.
That hearing process can often take more than a year, and it
has helped give rise to the belief among some in Central America that U.S.
authorities will give a permiso — permission to stay in the U.S. — to children
who arrive at the border.
Earlier in the day, the White House began pressing Congress
to come up with more than $2 billion in new money to manage the flood of
unaccompanied children. In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama said
officials needed the money for an aggressive strategy to repatriate recent
border crossers as well as for a sustained border security “surge” to fight
smuggling networks. In addition to the money, Obama wrote that the Department
of Homeland Security needed greater discretion in how it processed minors who
arrived at the border. That would require Congress to amend the 2008 law — a
prospect that has angered immigrant advocates.
“America stands at a
crossroads on immigration reform,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the
National Immigration Forum. The administration's proposal will be “held up to
close scrutiny,” he said.
Even before the border crisis, the complex politics of
immigration had created problems for both sides.
Democrats have spent months accusing House Republicans of
holding up the drive to change immigration laws. At the same time, the White
House is trying to insulate the president from complaints from some Latino
activists that his administration is enforcing the existing law too harshly.
In his remarks, Obama tried to turn the focus back on
Republicans, saying that they were to blame for refusing to bring immigration
reform to the House floor for an up-or-down vote. By most counts, enough
Democrats and Republicans in the House favor the bill that cleared the Senate
last year to pass it if it were called for a vote. But because the bill badly
splits Republicans in the House, Boehner has not brought it or any other
immigration measure to the floor.
“I held off on pressuring them for a long time to give
Speaker Boehner the space he needed to get his fellow Republicans on board,”
Obama said. But “the failure of House Republicans to pass a darn bill is bad
for our security, it's bad for our economy and it's bad for our future.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which like many business groups
has backed the Senate bill, issued a statement saying it was “deeply
disappointed by our elected leaders’ inability to achieve meaningful
immigration reform.”
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