The continuing GOP narrative on President Obama is that he is soft on undocumented immigrants. For years now they have been telling us that the president, unlike previous presidents, encourages undocumented immigrants to come to this country. Of course this is just another Republican lie, told to try and smear the president.
The truth is, as the chart above shows (from vox.com), that the Obama administration has been very vigilant in upholding current immigration law -- and has deported more undocumented immigrants in each year of the Obama presidency than any other president has done (including any Republican president).
But the president knows, just as millions of Americans know, that our immigration system is badly broken -- and for year's now, he has been asking Congress to pass an immigration reform law. Unfortunately, Congress has done nothing (even after a bipartisan senate committee came up with a plan) -- and with the Congress now completely under Republican control, there is no likelihood that immigration reform can be done anytime soon.
The president knows this, and he is tired of waiting. Something needs to be done now, even if it is only a partial fix to the broken system. And tonight, President Obama is going to announce he is taking unilateral action (through executive action) to make the system a bit more fair for immigrant families. I'm sure the right-wingers will accuse the president of opening our borders to undocumented immigrants, but that is the reaction to be expected from them. What he is actually doing is injecting some common decency into the system.
What is he likely to do? Something very simple. He is going to order that government officials stop splitting up families to satisfy the current broken system. He has already stopped the deportation of some 1.3 million youngsters who have spent most of their lives in this country through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Tonight, he is likely to extend that program to include another 700,000 young people.
But the biggest change will probably be in stopping the deportation of the parents of children born in this country or allowed to stay here through DACA. This would amount to about 3.4 million people -- far short of the total number of undocumented immigrants in this country (near 11 million people).
Right-wingers will try to tell you that these people are a drain on our economy (and need to be deported). That is an outrageous lie (even worse than the lie that Obama is "soft" on immigration). These people are actually a boon to our economy -- and our struggling economy would be in much worse shape if they were not here. They help our economy by working hard and by purchasing millions of dollars of goods/services from American business -- and they help sustain all levels of government by paying taxes (sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, etc.).
The president's executive action will not completely fix our badly broken immigration system -- but it will make it fairer by stopping the splitting up of immigrant families (which no decent person could justify). I applaud the political courage shown by President Obama in taking this action. I just wish Congress could be equally courageous and pass some real immigration reform.
