From the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest:
Our immigration system has been broken for decades — and every minute we fail to act, millions of people who live in the shadows but want to play by the rules and pay taxes have no way to live right by the law and contribute to our country.
So tonight, President Obama will address the nation to lay out the executive actions he’s taking to fix our broken immigration system. You can watch the President live Thursday night at 8 p.m. ET at WhiteHouse.gov/Live.
This is a step forward in the President’s plan to work with Congress on passing common-sense, comprehensive immigration reform. He laid out his principles for that reform two years ago in Del Sol High School in Las Vegas — and that’s where he’ll return on Friday to discuss why he is using his executive authority now, and why Republicans in Congress must act to pass a long-term solution to immigration reform.
The Senate passed a bipartisan bill more than 500 days ago, and while the country waits for House Republicans to vote, the President will act — like the Presidents before him — to fix our immigration system in the ways that he can.
So tune in Thursday night at 8 p.m. ET to learn what the President is doing to ensure that America will continue to be what it has always been: a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.
Oh, and don’t expect the address to be on broadcast television. NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox will not be covering it. But Univision, the Spanish language cable network will … and will interrupt the Latin GRAMMYs to do so.
Univision Network will air the POTUS announcement regarding Executive Action on Immigration live tomorrow. We will proceed with our coverage plans for the Latin GRAMMY’s, immediately following the President’s remarks. Complete coverage of the announcement, reactions and what it means for the US will be covered across Univision’s news platforms, as well as on the Network’s “Despierta America” morning show.
Of course, everyone is buzzing about the president’s address on immigration tonight and some of the headlines are entertaining. From “Obama is Not a Monarch!!1!!” to “GOP Governors Hostile on Obama Immigration Plan” (it is NOT breaking news for them to be hostile towards the president on any plan) to concern trolling (call to arms?) about violence and/or civil disobedience. Oh, and lawsuits. Republicans love lawsuits … except when they help people hurt by corporate negligence.
Let’s take a look at some of the commentary …
~
ThinkProgress: Republicans Were Fine With Bush Acting On Immigration Reform Without Congress
“With his immigration bill dead, the administration rolled out a proposed rule to address some of the major issues in the failed legislation,” the Associated Press writes, before outlining some of the changes the president will enact without the consent of Congress.
But the article isn’t about President Barack Obama’s impending executive action to “expand temporary protections for millions of undocumented immigrants.” It’s from 2007 and it details President George W. Bush’s push to enact changes to immigration law after his own immigration reform bill failed in the Senate.
The rules required employers to dismiss workers whose Social Security numbers don’t match those in federal databases, tightened border security, and streamlined guest-worker programs and urging employers to fire undocumented workers.
In defending his actions, Bush sounded a lot like Obama does today.
“Although the Congress has not addressed our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive reform legislation, my administration will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made,” Bush said.
~
National Journal: Critics Say Executive Action on Immigration Would Be Unprecedented. They Forget Their History.
The president’s announcement that he would soon take executive action to “to do what he could” to fix a broken immigration system in the absence of legislation has prompted critics to assert that this would be unprecedented unless first authorized by Congress. In fact, the record demonstrates the opposite. For at least the last 70 years, presidents have routinely acted first to permit the entry of people outside normal channels or to protect large numbers of people from deportation, with legislation ratifying the executive action coming later.
~
TPM: Did SCOTUS Already Greenlight Obama’s Executive Action On Immigration?
Can President Barack Obama temporarily legalize 5 million undocumented immigrants by himself?
That question has sparked a heated debate as the White House ponders the legal questions surrounding an unprecedented executive action on immigration that it says it will unveil by the end of this summer. The political implications are explosive as conservative Republicans are already floating impeachment of Obama if he unilaterally grants relief to millions of undocumented immigrants.
So, how much power does Obama have in this area?
Experts agree that the president has wide discretion to decide which migrants to target for deportation under the law enforcement theory of prosecutorial discretion. There are roughly 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally and officials have to prioritize which ones to remove. The Supreme Court reaffirmed that wide latitude in the 2012 ruling Arizona v. US, in which the justices said key provisions of Arizona’s strict immigration law ran afoul of federal supremacy in the area.
Then there is this:
Although a future president would unquestionably have the authority to reverse DACA and other executive actions, the politics would make that difficult. Despite a push by conservatives to sue to reverse DACA, Republicans opted not to do so in their lawsuit against the president, a sign that they’re wary of alienating Latino voters, who strongly support immigration relief. As Douthat concedes, “the politics of stripping millions of people of legal status will be too awful for a Republican Party facing an increasingly Hispanic electorate to contemplate.”
The White House is gearing up for an intense political fight. Obama’s senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer recently predicted that the president’s upcoming action on immigration will “certainly up the likelihood that [Republicans] would contemplate impeachment.”
Add the optics of a black president facing impeachment by a Republican Congress for helping Latino immigrants keep their families together and it is more than just “awful” for the GOP’s chances of ever winning a national election. It makes those chances zero. Or, as they say on Univision: Nada.
10 comments