http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/us/obamas-immigration-plan-could-grant-papers-to-millions-atleast-for-now.html?_r=0
U.S. | NEWS ANALYSIS
Obama’s Immigration Plan Could Grant
Papers to Millions, at Least for Now
By JULIA PRESTONNOV. 15, 2014
A deported immigrant waiting to receive his belongings in January at an Air Force base
in Guatemala City.CreditJohan Ordonez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Changes to the immigration enforcement system that President Obama is expected to
announce as early as this week could offer legal documents to as many as five million
immigrants in the country illegally, nearly double the number who received protection
from deportation under amnesty legislation in 1986.
Unlike that law, which gave permanent-resident green cards to 2.7 million immigrants,
Mr. Obama’s executive actions will not provide any formal, lasting immigration status,
much less a pathway to citizenship.
The actions will, however, have a large and, White House officials hope, swift impact on
the daily lives of many immigrant families, removing fears that relatives could be
separated from one another by deportations. Many immigrants will also receive work
permits, which will give them Social Security numbers and allow them to work legally
under their own names and travel within the United States, although not abroad. In
some states, they will be able to get driver’s licenses and professional certificates.
While the practical effect of the measures could therefore be broad, legally they will be
limited, providing only temporary reprieves from deportation. Congress could change
the laws that Mr. Obama will rely on for his actions, and a future president could cancel
the program, leaving immigrants out in the open and even more exposed to removal.
Mr. Obama said he had decided to take the measures after an immigration
overhaul passed by the Senate died this year in the Republican-controlled House. His
plans to act unilaterally have infuriated Republicans newly empowered in the midterm
elections, who say they earned a chance at the polls to write their own immigration
legislation in the Congress they will control next year.
The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said that Republicans would “fight the
president tooth and nail,” and that they were weighing whether to try to cripple Mr.
Obama’s plans with legal challenges or halt them by canceling their funding.
But the White House is planning a quick start, according to officials familiar with the
plans. It is breaking eligible immigrants into staggered groups, some of which will begin
applying for deportation deferrals within a few months. If that happens, Republicans
will have to decide whether to shut down programs that are already bringing
immigrants out from underground and giving their families relief from the constant
threat of separation.
According to administration officials familiar with the plans, the president will give
deportation deferrals and work permits to people in the country illegally whose children
are American citizens or legal permanent residents, if the parents have lived here for at
least five years. As many as 3.3 million immigrants could be eligible.
Officials are hoping that by centering the reprieve program on American citizens and
legal residents, they will blunt some Republican opposition. Americans cannot be
deported from their own country, and deportations of their parents have left many
children stranded here, often with serious consequences for their social progress.
The White House is also considering expanding a program Mr. Obama started in 2012,
called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which has given similar
reprieves to nearly 600,000 young immigrants who came here as children. More than
700,000 additional young people could become eligible. Officials may also include the
parents of immigrants with DACA deferrals in the new programs.
White House officials have declined to comment about the plans. They say no final
decisions have been made on the scope of the programs or whether they will be
announced this week or in December.
Mr. Obama’s actions will not make it easier for migrants to cross the southwestern
border, like the thousands of youths without their parents who floated on rafts across
the Rio Grande into South Texas over the summer. Foreigners caught at the border
would still be on the priority list for deportation, administration officials said, and a
primary goal of Mr. Obama’s actions will be to shift resources and agents to border
security that had been focused on removing immigrants from the interior.
Administration lawyers said they were preparing their case that enacting such measures
would be within Mr. Obama’s constitutional authority. They cited the president’s wide
latitude in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws.
Congress has provided only enough funding for the administration to carry out about
400,000 deportations each year. Mr. Obama, to the dismay of immigrant-rights
advocates, has met that goal, removing more than two million immigrants while in
office. But with 11.3 million people in the United States illegally, the lawyers’ argument
goes, enforcement agents will never be able to deport them all. The president, officials
say, has to devise policies that allow enforcement agents to go after convicted criminals
and others who pose serious threats to public safety and national security.
“The system that Congress has created and funded relies heavily on discretion,” said
Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who
studies executive powers in immigration. “The president needs to have enforcement
priorities, and he needs to apply them in a way that is uniform, predictable and
nondiscriminatory.”
Until now, Mr. Obama had kept deportation numbers high as part of a strategy to win
Republican support for a bill overhauling the immigration system, leading angry
immigrant-rights advocates to call him “the deporter in chief.” But his approach did not
win over House Republicans, and the federal authorities have struggled to rein in the
pace of enforcement. Now, the president is turning around and offering wholesale relief
to immigrants who officials say pose no known security or criminal threat.
Republicans argue that the deportation deferrals Mr. Obama is likely to issue were
intended to be used rarely, for people with compelling needs. By offering them to
millions, they say, he is blocking immigration agents from enforcing the law.
“This executive order would be a violation of the president’s oath of office and a blatant
abuse of power,” said Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, an outspoken opponent of
Mr. Obama’s policies. “The president has sworn an oath of office to uphold the laws, but
now he is planning to rewrite them on his own.”
The White House is gambling on a surge of support from immigrants and Latinos that
would make Republicans think carefully about how far to go to halt the programs.
Latino groups are mobilized, pressing the president to include as many as seven million
immigrants.
“The time for big, bold, unapologetic administrative relief is now,” said José Calderón,
president of the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Despite the rebuke he received in the elections, Mr. Obama has responded defiantly to
Republicans warning him not to act on his own.
“My executive actions not only do not prevent them from passing a law that supersedes
those actions,” he said at a news conference on Nov. 5, “but they should be a spur for
them to actually try to get something done.”
A version of this news analysis appears in print on November 16, 2014, on page A23 of
the New York edition with the headline: Obama Plan Could Grant Papers to Millions, at
Least for Now. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe