President Obama To Take Executive Action On Immigration Reform During This Week

Millions of undocumented immigrants are waiting for President Obama to announce whatever executive action is being taken to protect them from deportation. Last week, Obama announced he has a 10-point plan ready, which includes further action for DACA, and a program that stops deportations temporarily granting temporary work permits. DACA is the program which protects immigrant youth who arrived before the age of 16, have lived in the country uninterruptedly since June 15, 2007 and have no criminal records. Along with this, Obama’s plan might protect from 4 to 4.5 million undocumented US residents.

Cornell University professor, Stephen W. Yale-Loehr says, “Legally, the president has wide authority to act administrative-wise towards immigration. Federal courts have pointed out the president has wide executive authority to oversee the observance and application of immigration laws, as well as exercise discretion and rationalization to differ deportations.” However, executive actions are not permanent. It is up to each president to reject or maintain existing immigration policies.

It is quite certain Republicans won’t accept any reforms before they use all their options to stop it. Such options used could be suing the president to annul his executive actions, pass a law which revokes executive action, redact their own immigration reform to stop executive action or even disapprove the budget to proceed to a government shutdown.

Those who will not benefit from any executive action towards immigrant protection will be: those who have been previously deported, as well as those who have been previously deported and returned to the US illegally, and those who have committed serious crimes.