Newsweek
By Pema Levy
November 20, 2014
President
Obama will use his executive authority to allow up to five million
undocumented immigrants to apply for relief from deportation, a major
shift in immigration policy after years of
stalled legislative efforts and promises of executive action.
Obama’s
plan, laid out in a prime-time speech Thursday night, marks a
significant moment in his presidency and entails the biggest changes to
immigration policy since the 1980s. His decision
to use an executive order came after Republicans in the House of
Representatives failed to act on the issue over the past year and a
half.
“Scripture
tells us that we should not oppress a stranger. For we know the heart
of a stranger. We were strangers once, too,” Obama said Thursday night
from the East Room of the White House.
“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants.
We were strangers once too. And whether our forebears were strangers
who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here
only because that country welcomed them in.”
The
president’s plan will be implemented this spring. It will affect less
than half the estimated 11.3 million people living in the U.S. without
legal status, and focus on keeping families
together that might have been torn apart by deportations. Obama’s
action will also go a long way to repairing his relationship with
immigrant rights activists who have been disappointed in the high number
of deportations under Obama’s watch that prompted one
prominent activist to call the president the “deporter in chief.”
Obama
began his address Thursday began with an emphasis on border security,
stressing that his program is simply relief from deportation and not
“amnesty,” as many Republicans claim.
“All
we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you,” Obama said of the
millions of undocumented people who qualify and apply for relief. He
added that the change in emphasis will allow more
resources to be devoted to border security. “If you plan to enter the
U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went
up,” he said.
Obama
then shifted his matter-of-fact tone to acknowledge the human story
behind the immigration issue. “For all the back and forth in Washington,
we have to remember that this debate is about
something bigger,” he said. “It’s about who we are as a country and who
we want to be for future generations. Are we a nation that tolerates
the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our
beds never have a chance to get right with
the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends,
take responsibility, and give their kids a better future?
“Are
we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their
parents arms? Or are we a nation that values families and works together
to keep them together?”
To
qualify for relief under the new rules, an undocumented immigrant must
have lived in the United States for at least five years and have a child
who is either a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. After registering, undergoing a criminal background check and
paying taxes, these immigrants will be able to stay in the U.S. for
three years without fear of deportation. Some of the estimated 3.7
million parents who will qualify will also be able
to apply for work permits, according to the Washington Post. After
three years, it will be up to the next administration whether to extend
the program.
The
president’s plan will also expand a popular 2012 program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that gives deportation relief to
young immigrants brought to the country as children.
The administration is lifting an age cap for eligibility under DACA and
moving up the date by which an immigrant must have arrived in the U.S.
to January 1, 2010. The president is also extending the program from two
years to three.
Immigrants’
rights advocates had hoped the administration would also grant deferred action to the parents of DACA recipients, but a memo from Justice
Department’s Office of Legal Counsel released
Thursday showed the administration did not believe it had the legal
authority to do that.
Obama’s
executive action program also includes streamlining the Department of
Homeland Security’s legal immigration programs so that high-skilled
workers and their families can come to the
United States more easily. It also allocates more federal resources to
border security and makes deporting criminals a top priority, as opposed
to pursuing law-abiding immigrants. “We’re going to keep focusing
resources on actual threats to our security,”
Obama said Thursday. “Felons, not families; criminals, not children;
gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids.”
Obama
is also ending the controversial Secure Communities program that
allowed federal immigration officials to pick up undocumented immigrants
from local jails and put them on the path to
deportation. That program is being replaced with one that will focus on
deporting undocumented immigrants who are convicted criminals.
The
order does not have a specific program for the large population of
undocumented agriculture and food processing workers in the United
States, many of whom do not have children in the U.S.
Still, the United Farm Workers union estimates that at least 250,000
undocumented agriculture workers will be apply under the new program.
“This is the biggest victory for immigrants and their allies in the past
25 years,” said Frank Sharry, executive director
of the immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice. “We rejoice with the
millions who can come forward, get a work permit and live without fear.”
“What
the president is doing is a first step. It’s an initiation of a process
to heal our broken immigration system. But the people who have to
finish the job is the Congress of the United
States,” Representative Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois, one of the most
forceful voices for immigration reform in Congress, said on MSNBC
Thursday night.
Conservative
activists and Republicans decried the president’s announcement Thursday
night. “This is an unprecedented assault on the Constitution, the
separation of powers, and the rule of
law in the United States,” activist Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party
Patriots said in a statement before Obama’s announcement. “Despite the
President’s assurance that he is ‘not an emperor,’ that’s exactly what
he’s acting like.”
Republicans
on Thursday echoed the opinion that Obama is overstepping his legal
authority almost word for word. "The President has said before that he's
not king and he's not an emperor,"
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a YouTube video Thursday.
"But he's sure acting like one."
Republicans
have sworn to take action against the President’s action but it’s
unclear what authority they have to stop it. Some members of Congress
have pushed to cut funding for Obama’s orders,
but much of the program is expected to be administered by an agency not
funded directly by Congress.
Obama
insisted in his speech that his actions are lawful and challenged
Republicans to pass a bipartisan immigration bill so that his program
will no longer be necessary. The Senate passed
a bipartisan comprehensive reform bill in June 2013 but the House of
Representatives failed to act on similar legislation.
“To
those members of Congress who question my authority to make our
immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting
where Congress has failed, I have one answer,” Obama
said. “Pass a bill.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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