By using his executive authority to protect more than 4 million immigrants in the country illegally and to further strengthen border security, President Barack Obama drew a necessary line in the sand Thursday. If you don’t like my solution, the president said to members of Congress, pass your own bill.
Congress, for decades, has failed to pass needed immigration reforms. Last year, the Senate — with the support of Maine’s two senators — passed a compromise bill that created a path to citizenship while doubling the number of Border Patrol agents. Republican House leaders refused to hold a vote on the bill. From that perspective, Obama’s unilateral action is understandable and welcome. However, given the political dynamics of Washington and the divisive nature of the immigration debate, his executive order could guarantee that Congress continues to argue about immigration without passing any legislation. That would be Congress’ failure, not the president’s.
“Our immigration system is broken. No one questions that,” Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats, said in a press release after the president announced his plans in an address to the country.
“I’m disappointed that the House has failed to even debate this crucial subject, but I am also concerned about the impact of the president’s acting alone,” he added. “I fear that the action announced tonight could actually make the reform we need more difficult by causing a backlash in public opinion and solidifying Republican opposition.”
His comments were echoed by Republican Sen. Susan Collins. “By acting unilaterally, the president is making it less likely that Congress will act to pass comprehensive reforms,” she said in a statement. “He is undermining the efforts of those of us who favor immigration reform by diverting energy from that goal.”
The president’s order does three main things: improves border security and focuses deportations on “felons, not families, criminals, not children”; streamlines the process for high-skilled immigrants, entrepreneurs and STEM graduate students; and sets up a program that allows immigrant parents who have been in the country five years or more to pass background checks and begin paying taxes to seek work authorization and avoid deportation.
The last is the most controversial.
Because of Congress’ long paralysis on immigration matters, fixes through executive orders are not unusual. The most sweeping before Obama’s was President George H.W. Bush’s “Family Fairness” policy that deferred deportation of spouses and children of immigrants given legal status under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. This allowed about 1.5 million immigrants to remain in the U.S.
In response to Bush’s order, Congress passed the U.S. Immigration Act of 1990, which went further than the president’s action.
The president tried to set the right tone in his brief speech Thursday. The specter of illegal immigrants — and their burden on the welfare system — has become a staple of Republican campaign ads.
“We need more than politics as usual when it comes to immigration,” he said. “We need reasoned, thoughtful, compassionate debate that focuses on our hopes, not our fears.”
He also addressed his critics head-on, saying that his program is not amnesty. “Amnesty is the immigration system we have today — millions of people who live here without paying their taxes or playing by the rules while politicians use the issue to scare people and whip up votes at election time,” he said. “That’s the real amnesty — leaving this broken system the way it is. Mass amnesty would be unfair.”
At the same time, he said, “Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character.”
These are important points. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, millions of undocumented immigrants will not be deported from this country. So, putting them on a path to legal status is necessary.
If members of Congress don’t like the president’s solution, their only option is to build their own.
