Thirteen years ago the President said it: “the immigration system is broken”.
It was the end of 2001’s summer when President George W. Bush agreed to sign an immigration reform “by the end of the year”. It made sense: the U.S. needed to control its own border, the economy would benefit, millions of immigrants deserved it and the G.O.P. believed it could conquer the Latino vote (Bush got over 40% the previous year).
Of course it didn’t happened: first because of the infamous 9-11 and the two wars that followed. In 2006-07 the Senate was close, but politics won over policy. Then came the economic collapse. And the Border Patrol expanded as never before (now it costs $18 billion a year, more than all the other federal enforcement agencies combined). At the same time, Mexicans stop crossing the border. Yes, since 2007, their net immigration rate to the U.S. is zero.
In 2013, the Senate finally did it and passed an immigration reform (S.744) that would benefit national security, help the economy and benefit most of the almost 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the process of becoming Americans. But, the extremist wing of the Republican Party did it again and blocked the whole thing in the House of Representatives. Hence, “the immigration reform is dead”. Well, yes, maybe… but must be noted: the system is still broken.
Meanwhile 79% of Americans agree with a common sense immigration reform and the approval rate of the U.S. Congress is the lowest in the nation’s history, below 8%.
In that context, President Obama will follow his mantra of being in the right side of history and by the end of this summer will use its Executive Power to fix the broken immigration system. Obviously it will only be temporary and can be revoked by his/her successor. And, of course he can’t just issue blue passports to everybody. In fact, what can he do?
A lot. The U.S. constitution and the whole legal system offer the President the legal power to decide how to implement the law and which are the right priorities in enforcing it. In other words, he can decide to stop deporting immigrants. In 2013 over 100,000 kids without at least one of their parents were deported and thousands more live in foster care awaiting deportation. That without considering the many more affected by the “humanitarian crisis” at the border due to the detention of children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
As cleverly noted in a recent report of the Center for American Progress, 9.9 million of the undocumented immigrants have been here for 5 years or longer (and 7.5 million for more than a decade). Indeed, there are around 7.4 million families with mixed immigration status (some documented some not). This means, 9 million U.S. born citizens live with at least one undocumented family member.
So, the same President that has deported over 2 million immigrant in his Administration can implement a legal frame similar to the D.A.C.A. (Deferred Action for Children Arrivals), which has allowed to stay and work here over half a million kids that arrived here as infants.
As happened with D.A.C.A., modeled after the Dream Act (passed in the House in 2010 and then blocked in the Senate), the new Obama Immigration Policy can follow the script of the S.744, which would improve the border security as never before as well as open a legalization path to almost 9 million people.
How? Through simple enforcement reforms that will focus the use of public resources against the most serious threats like terrorist and murderers. Also, with an Affirmative Relief plan which will give a break to the many hard working immigrants, keep their families together until the reform finally comes — and also, honor the best values and dreams of this nation.
