Obama takes own action on immigration
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's sweeping immigration executive orders cap a turbulent, six-year quest to make headway on a thorny issue that has at times put the White House at odds with some of its fiercest supporters.
To those who argue the actions are long overdue or don't go far enough, Obama pins the blame solely on Republicans who oppose broader legislation. But Obama himself has contributed to the delays, making political calculations that left legislative efforts languishing throughout his first term and paused the promise of executive action in his second.
In recent months, the protracted process has been aimed in part at finding more favorable political terrain to unveil measures that spare as many as 5 million people in the U.S. illegally from deportation. However, Obama's decision to ultimately wait until after the midterm elections to exert his presidential powers has only heightened the anger from victorious Republicans, who have suggested responding with everything from lawsuits to impeachment.
“The action he's proposed would ignore the law, would reject the voice of the voters and would impose new unfairness on law-abiding immigrants — all without solving the problem,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is soon to become Senate majority leader.
Obama announced the executive actions Thursday after a fitful year of stops and starts. While the measures were widely welcomed by advocates, many said they had come far too late.
“It has been painful to see that it has taken so long because the politics get in the way all the time,” said Ben Monterroso, the executive director of the advocacy group Mi Familia Vota.
As a presidential candidate, Obama told supporters he would “guarantee” an immigration bill within his first year in office. Yet his entire first term slipped by without a real effort to seek legislation.
The president's advisers say the economic collapse forced Obama to shift his priorities and spend much of his first year seeking to stem massive job losses. Still, the president pursued health care legislation before losing the Democratic control of Congress that would have given him his best opportunity to pass an immigration bill.
Immigration advocates quickly turned their attention to pressing Obama to halt deportations on his own — an authority he insisted he did not have.“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that's just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed,” Obama said in 2011.Despite that assertion, Obama moved in 2012 to defer deportations for some young people who had been brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The action was viewed cynically by Republicans, who saw it as a ploy to bolster election-year support among Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing voting bloc.In January, Republicans will assume control of the Senate for the first time in Obama's presidency.They vow to launch an all-out fight to stop him from following through on executive actions that were six years in the making.
