In a media call earlier today, senior administration officials laid out the tenets of President Barack Obama's immigration-related executive orders he'll announce in two hours. The new measures will shift enforcement priorities, beef up border security, and protect an estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Specifically:
Enforcement
Obama will order increased border vigilance, though given that his administration has caught and deported far more people than George W. Bush ever did, and still has two years left in his presidency, not sure how much more you can do. And if this is meant as a bone to Republicans, not gonna work.
More significantly, immigration authorities will be ordered to shift their enforcement actions away from established families, and toward felons with "serious criminal convictions" and the recently arrived. This would protect productive law-abiding families, and focus on greater dangers, such as drug cartels, terrorists, and gangs. The administration feels it is on solid legal footing, as the Supreme Court has consistently and repeatedly affirmed the right of law enforcement agencies to set their own enforcement priorities.
Deferred Action
Two years ago, Obama issued an executive order protecting DREAM kids from deportation. These were the minor children brought across the border illegally by their parents, thus supposedly criminalizing them for no fault of their own. However, the original order capped their current age to 30 years old. Tonight, that age cap will be lifted, which is expected to benefit another 700,000 DREAMers.
But the big one, the one that will freak Republicans out the most, is the new order deferring action on about 5 million immigrants with American resident or citizen children. If you care about families and want to see them stay together, then this is a no-brainer. These immigrants would have to pass a background check, but assuming no hitches, would be given deferred status, which is not legalized status, but protects those individuals from deportations.
The administration justifies this action by noting that Congress has previously worked to keep such families together, so the order is in line with congressional intent. There are limits—for example, the parents of DREAMers aren't covered (unless they have other citizen children), because Congress has never acted to legalize the parents of kids with deferred status. So as Republicans scream about DICTATOR OBUMMER, he could've gone much further, but felt constrained by the law.
Finally, there will be a new rule-making process to make it possible for foreign students in the science and technology fields to stay and work after graduation, as well as creating visas for entrepreneurs will will be investing in the U.S. and creating jobs—obvious sops to the business community, and which might even have some marginal benefit to the U.S. economy.
Lots of poison, huh? That Congressional cyanide well will sure be full to the brim after this, huh? Keeping families together! Strengthening border enforcement! Giving business more foreign STEM employees! IMPEACH! As one of the officials noted, "In the past several years, Republicans have voted over 60 times to undermine the president’s signature achievement, and not once did the president complain about ‘poisoning the well’." True. Republicans are world-class whiners, dumping tons of cyanide into that well as they whine about pretty much anything the president does.