New York Times
By Michael D. Shear, Julia Preston, and Ashley Parker
November 13, 2014
WASHINGTON
— President Obama will ignore angry protests from Republicans and
announce as soon as next week a broad overhaul of the nation’s
immigration enforcement system that will protect
up to five million unauthorized immigrants from the threat of
deportation and provide many of them with work permits, according to
administration officials who have direct knowledge of the plan.
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.
That
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.
Extending
protections to more undocumented immigrants who came to the United
States as children, and to their parents, could affect an additional one
million or more if they are included in
the final plan that the president announces. White House officials are
also still debating whether to include protections for farm workers who
have entered the country illegally but have been employed for years in
the agriculture industry, a move that could
affect hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr.
Obama’s actions will also expand opportunities for legal immigrants who
have high-tech skills, shift extra security resources to the nation’s
southern border, revamp a controversial immigration
enforcement program called Secure Communities, and provide clearer
guidance to the agencies that enforce immigration laws about who should
be a low priority for deportation, especially those with strong family
ties and no serious criminal history.
A
new memorandum, which will direct the actions of enforcement and border
agents and immigration judges, will make clear that deportations should
still proceed for convicted criminals, foreigners
who pose national security risks and recent border crossers, officials
said.
White
House officials declined to comment publicly before a formal
announcement by Mr. Obama, who will return from an eight-day trip to
Asia on Sunday. Administration officials said details
about the package of executive actions were still being finished and
could change. An announcement could be pushed off until next month but
will not be delayed to next year, officials said.
Announcing
the actions quickly could hand critics like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas a
specific target to attack, but it would also give immigration advocates
something to defend. Waiting until
later in December could allow the budget to be approved before setting
off a fight over immigration.
“Before
the end of the year, we’re going to take whatever lawful actions that I
can take that I believe will improve the functioning of our immigration
system,” Mr. Obama said during a news
conference a day after last week’s midterm elections. “What I’m not
going to do is just wait.”
The
decision to move forward sets in motion a political confrontation
between Mr. Obama and his Republican adversaries that is likely to
affect budget negotiations and the debate over Loretta
E. Lynch, the president’s nominee to be attorney general, during the
lame-duck session of Congress that began this week.
Speaker
John A. Boehner said Thursday afternoon that if Mr. Obama went forward
on his own, House Republicans would “fight the president tooth and
nail.”
Mr.
Boehner is considering suing Mr. Obama over immigration — as
Republicans have said they might do on the president’s health care law —
and on Thursday he refused to rule out a government
shutdown, despite saying that was not his goal.
“We are looking at all options, and they’re on the table,” Mr. Boehner said.
In
the Senate, a group of Republicans — led by Mr. Cruz, Senator Mike Lee
of Utah and Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama — is already planning to
thwart any executive action on immigration.
The senators are hoping to rally their fellow Republicans to oppose
efforts to pass a budget next month unless it prohibits the president
from enacting what they call “executive amnesty” for people in the
country illegally.
“If
the president wants to change the legal structure, he should go through
Congress rather than acting on his own,” Mr. Lee said Thursday. “I
think it’s very important for us to do what we
can to prevent it.”
But
the president and his top aides have concluded that acting unilaterally
is in the interest of the country and the only way to increase
political pressure on Republicans to eventually support
a legislative overhaul that could put millions of illegal immigrants on
a path to legal status and perhaps citizenship. Mr. Obama has told
lawmakers privately and publicly that he will reverse his executive
orders if they pass a comprehensive bill that he
agrees to sign.
White
House officials reject as overblown the dire warnings from some in
Congress who predict that such a sweeping use of presidential power will
undermine any possibility for cooperation
in Washington with the newly empowered Republican majority.
“I
think it will create a backlash in the country that could actually set
the cause back and inflame our politics in a way that I don’t think will
be conducive to solving the problem,” said
Senator Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the
Democrats and supports an immigration overhaul.
Although
a Republican president could reverse Mr. Obama’s overhaul of the system
after he leaves office in January 2017, the president’s action for now
will remove the threat of deportation
for millions of people in Latino and other immigrant communities.
Officials said lawyers had been working for months to make sure the
president’s proposal would be “legally unassailable” when he presented
it.
The
major elements of the president’s plan are based on longstanding legal
precedents that give the executive branch the right to exercise
“prosecutorial discretion” in how it enforces the
laws. Those precedents are also the basis of a 2012 decision to protect
from deportation the so-called Dreamers, who came to the United States
as young children.
“I’m
confident that what the president will do will be consistent with our
laws,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Thursday.
The
White House expects a chorus of outside legal experts to back the
administration’s legal assessment once Mr. Obama makes the plan
official.
In
several “listening sessions” at the White House over the last year,
immigration activists came armed with legal briefs, and White House
officials believe those arguments will form the basis
of the public defense of his actions.
Many
pro-immigration groups and advocates — as well as the Hispanic voters
who could be crucial for Democrats’ hopes of winning the White House in
2016 — are expecting bold action, having
grown increasingly frustrated after watching a sweeping bipartisan
immigration bill fall prey to a gridlocked Congress last year.
“This
is his last chance to make good on his promise to fix the system,” said
Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops. “If he delays
again, the immigration activists would — just politically speaking —
jump the White House fence.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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