Why We Pressure Obama on Deportations

Let’s face reality: the discharge petition that has created a small movement in social media around #DemandAVote is in the same vein as Nancy Pelosi’s hastily-assembled immigration bill she put out during the shutdown last year: they are both a hopeless, somewhat cynical, entirely symbolic reminder that Democrats are pushing for immigration and Republicans are pushing against to rally political capitol at a key moment. For the immigrant rights movement, however, it does offers two things: 1) an opportunity to get people to go on the record on immigration again, and, more importantly, 2) undeniably proof that the Democrats have officially thrown in the kitchen sink on immigration, and nothing, ranging from meeting them more than halfway; to crafting legislation to take place after Obama leaves office; to promises to ban LGBT vegans from speaking about gun control in women’s health clinics on MSNBC, is going to change the fact that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) will not allow a vote on immigration. This puts more pressure on Obama, as he is the person who can cut down deportations with the stroke of a pen.

The chances and politics of the discharge petition were fairly clear from the start: the petition is doomed because any cooperation with a discharge petition to circumvent Speaker Boehner will result in becoming a traitor and outcast within the GOP. Considering how even the most moderate Republicans on immigration were wavering on the issue of citizenship through the usual procedures, and the resistance to giving even undocumented US soldiers a pathway to citizenship with the ENLIST Act, there’s no way they would sign off on forcing immigration reform on their party.

This is similar to what we have seen before: Democrats wanted to hit Republicans with something they knew they can’t fight against too hard at a moment they need to hurt them. In 2012, it was Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), sweeping the momentum out from under Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was crafting similar legislation. In 2013, it was during the shutdown when they wanted to buckle the GOP and force an end, and Nancy Pelosi put her immigration bill forward to put more pressure on them by driving their poll numbers down even further. Today, it’s one last reminder to Latinos which party is blocking legislative immigration reform to make it a voting issue in time for midterm elections.

Immigration has become that issue which the GOP recognizes it must change it’s stance on, but cannot wrangle Representatives like Louie Gohmert (R-TX) to even stop taking bombastically outspoken, unpopular positions on; along with stances against gay marriage, it is an issue that was once a mainstay of the party that public opinion has completely changed on, and the politics have yet to catch up to popular sentiment.

I could disparage Nancy Pelosi for playing politics with the issue, which she did, but the fact is that it is hard to demand more from her legislatively: the discharge petition was the kitchen sink they could throw in to get around Speaker Boehner. Boehner has, so far, allowed only anti-immigrant legislation to come to a vote this year. As of right now, even Pelosi’s most desperate options from the House are all exhausted, and now all we can do is call on her and others to bring political pressure down on the President to extend deportation relief.

Deportation relief is, at this point, what the immigrant rights community is looking to. While many in the movement understand that this would not be the long term solution the immigrant community, as well as the broader citizen community and economy, needs, it will address the fact that we have had around 2 million deportations under Obama. Although reform was promised in the first year, we have seen the Administration run in the exact opposite direction to try to appease elements of the GOP that, in the end, will likely never support the President anyway. Afterall, if the GOP is balking at the ENLIST Act to give undocumented soldiers a pathway to citizenship, they’re prioritizing an anti-immigrant agenda over showing support for the troops, something that every politician is quick to pounce on.

While there would be criticism over any unilateral reform, Obama would not have to go so far as to use an executive order, rather, he could use his discretion as the head of agencies in the United States to drastically reduce immigration enforcement. The last time Obama did so, it took Republicans by surprise and they were powerless; they couldn’t publicly fight DACA at the same time they were trying to minimize the damage from Romney’s “Self-Deportation” campaign.

Predictably, the strongest opposition would come from those who were the engineers of the shutdown, who have yet to regain the political capitol they lost then. Realistically, if outside groups aligned with GOP obstructionists like The Heritage Foundation have not yet let go of whatever death grip they have over Boehner that forced him to renounce the immigration values he said at the podium only a week before, they aren’t going to. If this situation is allowed to drag out for the next two years as it has for the past six, we take our chances with a new Executive Branch, which inherits a far more expansive detention and deportation machine than Obama did.

The kitchen sink is a failure, and the gauntlet officially thrown: either immigration relief will come from Obama, or his legacy on immigration will be as the one who broke up more families than any other President. While the broken system has been inherited, it is the Administration which is ultimately tasked with overseeing enforcement: Obama’s failure to perform on his campaign promise has resulted in more deportations than any other President already.