The Obama administration kicked off one of the most sweeping changes in immigration policy in decades Wednesday, accepting applications from young illegal immigrants for the temporary right to live and work openly in the United States without fear of deportation.
An estimated 1.7 million young people who arrived in the United States illegally as children could qualify for the new Department of Homeland Security program, and thousands are expected to pay the $465 application fee for a “deferred action” permit that would protect them from deportation for at least two years. […]
“Even though DA [deferred action] is only a temporary immigration relief initiative, it represents the largest immigration benefit application process since the 1986 immigration reform law,” said [National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities] board member Patricia Montes. […]
The program is open to immigrants ages 15 to 31 who came to the country before they were 16 and have lived here continuously for at least the past five years. Among other restrictions, they must be free of serious criminal convictions, be enrolled in or have completed high school, or have served in the U.S. military. On Tuesday, officials confirmed that those enrolled in GED programs and certain training programs will also qualify, broadening the program’s potential reach.[…] The protected status has to be renewed every two years.[…]
Opponents and supporters alike agree that the two-year protections are likely to be renewed indefinitely, as has been the case with Haitian refugees and others who have gotten such status. While future administrations may stop granting the protections, they are unlikely to move to deport those already enrolled.
1) This is good news. I wish it were better – I wish Congress had passed The Dream Act, and for that matter I’d like to see some relief for undocumented immigrants other than the very narrow demographic slice targeted here. This isn’t amnesty, and there’s no pathway to citizenship. But this may be the best that can be done in the face of Republican opposition, and it’s good that it got done, and tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people will be helped.
2) For most of his stay in office, Obama has been trying to court conservatives on immigration. Conservatives always say that once the government gets serious about enforcing current law, then they’ll talk immigration reform. Obama has set records for deportation, even though the unemployment crisis has meant that many fewer immigrants are coming here.
But trying to give in to or compromise with conservatives is pointless, because their best political interests are served by opposition to the Obama administration, not by compromise. It’s the same reason the NRA can’t take “yes” for an answer. And the reason that the huge number of deportations has had absolutely zero impact on the heartfelt conservative belief that the current laws are not being enforced.
But it’s nice to see Obama seemingly realize that compromise won’t happen (at least not with the current GOP), and act accordingly.
3) This is also political, of course. I think that immigration advocates have been pushing harder on the Democrats lately — and, possibly, they have more leverage with an election coming up.
Ezra Klein speculates that this will be good for Obama in the voting booth:
Estimates are that this will apply to almost two million illegal immigrants. And unlike most of what happens in an election year, this policy is actually changing their lives.[…]
These immigrants, of course, can’t vote. But they have friends, family, and are part of communities that can. And those communities, when faced with the choice between the presidential administration that did this, and the Republican Party that they’ve seen in recent years, might come to decide that this is a rather consequential election.
If so, then good; that is how politics are supposed to work.
On the other hand, Nate Silver argued that in the states that are most likely to decide a close Obama/Romney race, Latin@ voters are a relatively small factor. So it may not matter much for this election. But it could matter in the future.
* * *
The photo is by Sitthixay Ditthavong for AP. Their caption:
Some of the thousands of young immigrants who showed up Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2012, at Chicago’s Navy Pier for guidance with a new federal program that would help them avoid deportation, applaud during speeches by dignitaries. At least 13,000 people showed up for help in putting together identity documents and filling out the detailed forms on the first day that the federal government began accepting applications, which far exceeded what organizers could handle. The crowd was so large that workshop organizers had to turn some of them away.
President Obama can’t convince Congress to change immigration law, so he decides to rule by imperial fiat. He learned his lessons from Mayor Daley well, I see.
Oh, no it’s not. If the President wants legislative change but the Congress says “No”, then the President is supposed to enforce existing law, not change it himself.
Ah, yes. The 1986 immigration law. I was around for that. Sen. Kennedy was one of the authors. It was a deal – give us amnesty and we’ll tighten up the borders. Amnesty was duly granted. Conservatives and Republicans kept their end of the deal. But when it came time to tightening up the borders Kennedy and the rest of the Democrats reneged.
they figure the liberals will pull another stunt like they did in 1986. Compromising with liberals (on this matter at least) is pointless. They don’t keep their word. Hell, on this very blog I’ve had people tell me that concepts like “honor” are invalid if they keep people from achieving their goals of social change. How do you cut a deal with people like that?
Don’t mistake the fact that President Obama has set records for deportations as evidence that he’s serious about enforcing current law. The bar for setting a record for deportations was so low that setting a new record for it doesn’t necessarily qualify as being serious. If your goal is to catch a 5 pound fish and the record is a 2 pound fish, catching a 2.5 pound fish is a record but it’s not close to the goal.
No, the reasons that the increase in deportations has had little impact on the belief that the current laws are not being enforced is that conservatives recognize that a) deportations are infamous for being a revolving door, b) President Obama has consistently and vigorously attacked State laws that try to do something about the problem, and c) he’s opposed providing funding for the laws passed in the Bush II era to fence and fortify those portions of our borders where people crossing over illegally is the biggest problem. If President Obama was serious about doing something about illegal border crossing and dealing with people who are here illegally he’d stop fighting things like the Arizona immigration laws and start fortifying those borders where people cross illegally. That’s why conservatives don’t think he’s serious about enforcing immigration law.
Compromise. When the conservatives want to pull the country to the right and the liberals want to pull it to the left, conservatives can hardly be blamed for seeing desirable the compromise “go to the left a little more slowly”. The idea here to change things, not to keep them going the way they are.
For the record; I’m not opposed to the spirit of those portions of the DREAM act that are meant to enable young people who were brought over here illegally as kids to stay here legally. In fact, a path for citizenship for them works for me. We may argue over the details of what the criteria should be, but I won’t favor making them something unobtainable as a smokescreen for blocking people from actually achieving it.
However, a path for citizenship for adults who have entered the U.S. illegally absolutely does not work for me. Permanent resident alien status – “Resident Alien” is the actual phrase printed on a “green card”, folks, not “Legal Immigrant” or “Documented Worker” – for people meeting certain criteria can work. But a path to citizenship? Sorry. That’s a red line for me and for a whole lot of other people. Don’t accept that and we’ll be happy to keep the laws just the way they are, all set for a Republican administration to enforce with vigor.
Want to know why the NRA can’t take “yes” for an answer? Because they are not hearing “yes” very much. Silence != “yes”, silence = “we’re biding our time until the political environment is more favorable.”
And in fact the NRA hears “No” a lot as well. A few miles a way from me in Chicago the NRA hears “No” in a thunderous chorus. Illinois refuses to permit its subjects to exercise their right to bear arms. When the Supreme Court told Chicago that it was violating its subjects’ rights by refusing to permit them to even own guns it replied by passing a new set of laws that make it tremendously expensive and time consuming to own a gun and still forbidding people to bear them – even on their own property in some buildings they own. You can carry a gun in your house. But not on your lawn, not on your front steps, and not even in your garage. The explicit and express object was to try to find a way to effectively block law-abiding people from keeping and bearing arms (the laws will have no effect on the criminals at all, of course) and to delay and financially exhaust people who want their Constitutional rights. Criticize the NRA for fundraising? What do you think it will cost to appeal Chicago’s new gun laws all the way through a few layers of the judicial system through to the Supreme Court (where it will lose). What will it cost Chicago’s subjects to defend an indefensible law, money that could otherwise be used to hire more cops (which everyone from the Mayor’s office and City Council on down unanimously agree they need)?
So, no – the NRA is not, in fact, hearing “Yes”. Not in Illinois, anyway. And not in a lot of places. Want the NRA to stop political activism and fundraising? That’ll happen when Democratic politicians start crafting and passing laws that preserve, enable and even encourage people to exercise their right to keep and bear arms. As long as they are silent on the subject or fight them as they do all over the country the NRA will continue activism.
Ron,
You’d think from your comments that Republicans haven’t held the presidency for 14 of the 26 years since the last amnesty. You complain about Obama’s record being set by a very low bar, yet somehow fail to mention that very low bar was set by Republican administrations.
There are two main reasons we haven’t seen more enforcement and neither of them have anything to do with Democrats or liberals being dishonorable.
1) A lot of business interests – many of them leaning or straight-up Republican – rely on cheap labor from illegal immigrants. They don’t want enforcement at all and they especially don’t want workplace enforcement, and so it didn’t happen even under Republican administrations.
2) The border is really long and really remote and really hard to effectively patrol. If you ever went down there, you would see this. They did significantly step up enforcement along what were the main routes of entry at the time – Texas and California – and they did manage to reduce the numbers there substantially. However, they didn’t succeed in reducing the total number of immigrants. The routes shifted into much more remote areas in Arizona and New Mexico that are much harder to patrol effectively. The death rates soared, but people kept coming. There was an effort to do a virtual fence. It turned into a complete boondoggle – not for political reasons but for technical reasons.
What HAS succeeded in reducing illegal immigration? Our shitty economy.
Oh, there’s no question that Republicans have been complicit in the current immigration situation. It’s one of the reasons that the Tea Party movement started up. Amp understands that. You can see it in the the distinction that he drew when he cites “conservatives” pretty consistently in his post above rather than using the word “Republicans”.
But the Republican party is going back to it’s conservative roots, little by little, as more conservative nominees, often supported by the Tea Party movement, defeat what are colloquially called “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only) in primaries and Democrats in the general election. Not across the board, but the trend is clear.
The U.S. has long borders. There’s also the virtual borders – any airport or seaport that accepts international travellers. Yes, changes have been made. More needs to be done. Will we ever eliminate all illegal border crossings? No. We’ll never eliminate all poverty or all terror attacks either. But we can do more than we’re doing now, and it’s worthwhile. What that should certainly NOT include is rewarding lawbreakers instead of punishing them. Nor should it include interfering with the State’s efforts to enforce immigration law instead of cooperating with them.
Well, given that enforcement did increase after the amnesty in 1986, maybe you should stop referring to things like “liberal stunts,” dishonor, and the other side not being a valid negotiating partner.
Virtually none of this narrative is true (except for yes, Kennedy was involved).
The IRCA legislation (Immigration Reform and Control Act, I think) of 1986 was written by folks from both parties, supported by Ronald Reagan, and included both amnesty and stepped up enforcement. The main enforcement mechanism was increased sanctions against employers who employ undocumented workers, but it also had a provision to increase border enforcement.
As you can see here, after IRCA was enacted, the border patrol budget shot up rapidly, and both the size of the border patrol and the actual hours spent guarding the border went up significantly. (Apprehensions per agent went down, but that’s to be expected – when you hire more cops, there are fewer violators per cop to be arrested).
As you can see here, in the decade after IRCA, deportations increased significantly (although they’ve increased a lot more since then). You can also see that historically, deportation numbers have never been nearly as high as they are now, not even under Saint Reagan.
So I don’t see any evidence at all to support this fairy tale of the eeeevviiiillll Democrats betraying the good but naive Republicans.
I’ve heard that business interests pressured congress to ease up pressure on business owners in the years following IRCA. I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly is a plausible story. However, if that is what occurred, I very much doubt that it happened only with Democratic members of Congress. Republican elected officials aren’t famous for their independence from business interests. If this is what you’re claiming, do you have any evidence at all to show that the only legislators influenced by business interests to ease up IRCA enforcement, were Democrats?
The wall is bad policy, and it’s not a sign of bad faith to oppose it. It combines the vice of being incredibly expensive to implement with the vice of not actually working as intended.
Plus, remember, nearly half of undocumented immigrants entered the country legally in the first place.
See the non-partisan congressional research service report (pdf link).
Also, the wall makes attempting to immigrate more dangerous, leading to hundreds of needless deaths.
“The Corps of Engineers also predicted that the 25-year life cycle cost of the fence would range from $16.4 million to $70 million per mile depending on the amount of damage sustained by the fencing.”
The border is about 2000 miles long, so multiply those figures by 2000. You want to throw away a ton of taxpayer money on a huge, symbolic construction project that simply wouldn’t work.
A more effective policy would be to take those hundreds of millions, go to Mexico, and hire as many people as you can. (There’s nothing illegal about the US government hiring people in other countries.) It doesn’t matter what we hire them to do, as long as it pays decent wages; perhaps we could engage in a series of labor-intensive public works projects (build some new hospitals, public swimming pools, a university, whatever), or offer grants to local entrepreneurs earmarked for hiring new employees. Whatever.
The point is, immigration to the US from south of the border isn’t driven by lax enforcement, or lack of a wall. It’s driven by the lack of jobs in Mexico. Spending money to improve employment in Mexico isn’t an idea that will fly with the public, because it’s not punitive. But it would actually work.
Ron wrote:
Deferred action isn’t legislative change; it’s a change in how existing laws are implemented, which is well within the executive branch’s rights. The Supreme Court recently has said that prosecutor discretion is legal and legitimate, most recently in the Arizona case, but also in an older decision written by Scalia.
“Deferred action isn’t legislative change; it’s a change in how existing laws are implemented, which is well within the executive branch’s rights. The Supreme Court recently has said that prosecutor discretion is legal and legitimate, most recently in the Arizona case, but also in an older decision written by Scalia.”
Obviously, most people are in favor of prosecutor discretion when they disagree with the law and agree with the decision the prosecutors are taking. What do you think about prosecutor discretion regarding WOT torture? Are you happy with that?
james – the same can be said about the legislative powers of congress as well, no? I’m happy about the laws I like and unhappy about the laws I dislike, and I assume that same is true for you. That does not affect the legitimacy of law-making, nor is someone who believes that congress has the right to pass laws committed to being happy about every law that passes.
Well, step back a little. I support law-making because I think Congress is sort-of-semi-democratic, so I support the system even though I don’t support the particular law. I wouldn’t withdraw my support for democracy just because I disagree with one particular law.
Can we make an equivalent appeal for prosecutor discretion? Why is that such a great idea that I should support it? Amp doesn’t go as far as to say anything. He just says he thinks it is legitimate. But there’s a school of thought which regards it as being capricious and malevolent and running against the rule of law. So I’m asking whether torture policy is a duff result produced by a legitimate system – in which case please explain why it is legitimate – or just the sort of thing that happens if you give those in power a choice whether to go after their friends or nor?
Whether it is a good system, and whether it is a legitimate system in accordance with the rule of the law, are two different things. As far as I understand the legal system in the US, the supreme court is the ultimate arbitrator of whether something is legal and legitimate. It doesn’t decide on whether things are good ideas or not. So, if the supreme court decided that prosecutor discretion is legitimate, then it *is* legitimate, and it gets its legitimacy from the supreme court.
I’m not fan of prosecutor discretion as a general principle. Or more accurately, I believe prosecutors should have limited discretion based on clearly defined principles stated by law, not by ad hoc principles based on convenience to the executive branch. So I sympathize with your position, and, were I American, I would probably support a legislative move to limit it. But at the moment it is legal, and it is one of the tools accorded to the executive branch. And given that this is the case, I make my decisions on whether or not I support a particular use of prosecutor discretion on my opinions regarding what it achieves, rather than on my general opinion about prosecutor discretion; and I think everyone else has the right to do the same.
James, it was Ron who brought up the question of it the executive using discretion is constitutional, which is why that was the question I addressed.
I’m with Eytan — in this particular case, I support it because I like the result. ETA: But regardless of whether I like the result, it is certainly a legitimate use of executive power. I’m capable of both saying “I hate the way the President is using his power” and admitting that his use of power is within his legal authority, and have often had that experience in my life.
However, you should also consider that when it comes to immigration, the use of discretion in deciding what to do with limited resources is literally inevitable, so saying that you don’t think discretion should exist seems impracticable. There is not unlimited funding; it is absolutely impossible, given finite resources, for the executive to avoid making decisions about where resources will be applied.
Congress could increase funding, of course – and has. But it doesn’t seem likely that they’re going to increase it by ten or twenty times, which is what I’d guess it would take to be a game-changer. Keep in mind that the law of diminishing returns applies, too — the more we spend, the less bang we’ll get per additional buck. Realistically, it will never be the case that there is so much money spent on border enforcement that there are no choices to be made.
So when someone says they are against the executive having any decision-making power (i.e, discretion), what they’re really saying is that they’re entirely ignorant of how reality works, or at least in denial about it. The executive making no decisions is not an option.
I think the decision to move resources away from deporting kids who were raised in America and are on track to be economically productive, and towards deporting people who are violent or destructive, is a good decision. It makes the system more just, and it’s good for just about everybody.
The right to exclude others is a fundamental part of being a country. Allowing to enter against a country’s will, is at heart a statement that the country can’t exist any more.
I think it’s unfortunate that we’ve failed to distinguish between the people who argue for more inclusive immigration (obviously reasonable, whether or not you agree) and those who argue for “forced” immigration, a la “we have a RIGHT to immigrate illegally.”
Obviously most forced-immigration people would also be liberal, but the reverse isn’t true.