By Claudia Longo
Many immigration advocates are already saying, that thanks to them and their pressure put on President Obama, he will act on immigration…which in part is true, but without the good heart of our president their pleads would have been ignored. Can you imagine had they put the same pressure on the Congress? Obama would be signing Comprehensive Immigration Reform Law instead of an Executive Action.
Wrong strategy.
After getting all the recommendations from a team of advisors and Secretary Jeh Johnson, President Obama said, he will act as broad as possible on immigration the next coming weeks.
The Executive Action, that the president can take, would grant prosecutorial discretion on deportations only to a certain group of undocumented immigrants under certain categories. This means, there is no way for Obama to help all 11 million undocumented in the country by executive action. Only Congress can do that by changing the existing immigration law. And even then, it is possible that not all of them, enter the criteria the law would cover.
Advocates have been saying he should give deportation relief to all, the 11 Million, but that is inaccurate and impossible to achieve through administration orders. What he has been asked to do by this organizations, is what kings do. That is why the president had said only Congress can help a bigger number of people.
President Obama will act. We should all be thankful for what he will do for the immigrant community. Whatever it is, so far it will help some immigrants living in the country without documents. Much better than what Congress and particularly The House of Representatives with a Republican majority, has done so far, which is nothing but try to pass anti immigrant bills and try to end DACA for young immigrants brought to the country as minors, not once but three times.
Obama is risking the next two years of partnership (or lack of it) with Congress by acting on his own, despite all kinds of threats coming from Republicans, including impeachment and government shutdown. And he is still willing to act because it is the right thing to do.
The job is not done until we get Reform by law. What the president can do to fix the system, is just a very small part of the real solution and it can be revoked by the next president.
I really hope we see some real pressure on Congress the next few months and even years from all the Pro Immigration Reform organizations and Activists.
But if we continue to see more “Obama didn’t deliver” bashing, there would not be no doubt that those organizations were fighting with the Republican Party against the President and our community interests, untrustingly and completely not representing the undocumented community. It is time for new immigration leadership.
Follow Claudia on Twitter @ClauVale77
