With roughly 11.5 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally - far more than the government could reasonably deport - the White House believes it has wide latitude to prioritize which of those individuals should be sent home. The most sweeping, controversial step under consideration involves halting deportation for millions, a major expansion of a 2012 Obama program that deferred prosecutions for those brought here illegally as children. Roughly half a million have benefited from that program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.Obama is considering - potentially involving many millions of people if he extends relief to parents of DACA children, close relatives of U.S. citizens or immigrants with clean criminal records.Other options under consideration, such as changes to how green cards are distributed and counted, might be less controversial because of the support they enjoy from the business community and other influential groups. Obama may have undermined his case because he has insisted time and again that hes the president, not the king, and cant just make the laws up by myself. In a 2012 interview with Telemundo, the Spanish-language TV network, Obama defended his decision to defer deportations for children but said he couldnt go any bigger. If we start broadening that, then essentially I would be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So thats not an option, he said then. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in a conference call this month with GOP House members, accused Obama of threatening to rewrite our immigration laws unilaterally. If the president fails to faithfully execute the laws of our country, we will hold him accountable, Boehner said, according to an individual who participated in the call.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:12:03 +0000
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