Obama’s Big Immigration Announcement

Many organizations have been saying it for months: immigration reform has been bogged down in the House and cannot pass. With this in mind, Obama announced today a bold plan to “fix as much of the broken immigration system” as he can.

Almost every sign has pointed to this, i.e. Eric Cantor’s recent primary or even Rep. Gutierrez throwing in the towel on reform legislation, and it has brought us to today. While we are left to wonder what specific form this relief will take, it is a big step to take which may help in breaking the dysfunction in Washington.

There’s no denying unilateral Presidential action is necessary: signs were piling up that Congress cannot accomplish legislation any time soon, and the weight of the circumstances of the children in the desert is giving this debate a cartoonish, ‘Child’s First Bible’ good and evil feeling to the debate: as a result of a hopelessly complicated immigration system that takes decades to navigate under the best of circumstances, the child refugee crisis is worsened because these numbers are hitting an already-overburdened system.

Images of little children in cages not much better than at an animal shelter are a direct result of the dire strain they are putting on a system that is already collapsing under the weight of it’s own dysfunction. Children in cages also tend to be an unforgettable photo. With this additional spotlight on immigration, in addition to the signs that legislation simply cannot happen, Obama took his opportunity to make his announcement.

We are left to wonder, however, what form this will take, and how effective it will be. For an example of ineffective executive authority being wielded, one needs to look no further than the Morton Memo: it was supposed to help keep deportations to threats to security, however, many families have stories of a loved one being deported for a traffic ticket long after the Morton Memo was written.

Although Ted Cruz is claiming that this situation has arisen from Obama’s “lawlessness” with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), there’s a few key problems with that line of thinking: 1) None of these children qualify for DACA, and 2) DACA was announced 2 years ago, and it didn’t bring in this flood when it was in the media.

While Ted Cruz will predictably scream and the Tea Party will gnash it’s teeth over any use of executive authority, they were going to undermine immigration reform at every turn: there is simply no pleasing them, we tried to with piecemeal bills, bills without a path to citizenship and billions upon billions of dollars to support a small army on the border. No matter how many concessions are offered, they will simply say no and attack anyone who says yes, claiming that they should have said yes another way perhaps to look reasonable.

“Today was one good step, but the follow through will determine whether or not it is in the right direction. His rhetoric has changed from ‘I can’t stop deportations on my own’ to ‘I will take executive action’, now it is a matter of him being bold and meeting the communities’ demands, like expanding deferred action, or just making small fixes to try to get pressure off his back,” said Erika Andiola, Co-Founder of Dream Action Coalition.

Today, the President announced a plan. Tomorrow, his Administration will defend it from attacks from the right, and we will see how his plan takes shape. While there is reason for optimism, it must be tempered with the reality that this is only the first of many necessary steps, not only to see that this relief is instituted, but to ultimately reform our hopelessly broken immigration system.