Sunday Times 2
Obama to press ahead on immigration, amid rising Republican anger
View(s):LAS VEGAS, Nov 22, 2014 (AFP) -US President Barack Obama staunchly defended his unilateral move to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, pledging to implement his controversial plan despite furious criticism from congressional opponents.
The controversial overhaul, praised by many immigration rights activists, provides three-year relief for millions of undocumented people who have lived in the country for more than five years and have children that are US citizens or legal residents.
According to the president, it also channels more resources to the US border with Mexico and shifts deportation priorities toward expelling felons.
“I have come back to Del Sol to tell you, I’m not giving up. I will never give up,” Obama insisted at the Las Vegas, Nevada high school where he launched his immigration reform efforts two years ago.
“We’re going to keep on working with members of Congress to make permanent reform a reality,” he added.
“But until that day comes, there are actions that I have the legal authority to take that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just, and this morning I began to take some of those actions.” He wasted little time, signing two elements of the orders.
“Don’t let all the rhetoric fool you,” Obama said, referring to repeated Republican claims that the administration has done little to beef up border security or stem illegal crossings.
Obama said the overall number of people trying to cross illegally was now at its lowest level since the 1970s.
Crucially, the reforms do not offer a pathway to citizenship, something Obama was quick to point out to the largely-Hispanic American crowd. Republicans have nevertheless heaped scorn on the plan, calling it “executive amnesty,” “illegal” and “unconstitutional,” bringing tensions between Washington’s warring camps to a boil.
Already emboldened by their sweeping midterm election victory, Republicans vowed to thwart Obama’s plans.
“With this action, the president has chosen to deliberately sabotage any chance of enacting bipartisan reforms he claims to seek,” House Speaker John Boehner declared.
“I will say to you: the House will in fact act.”
‘Illegal power grab’
In a primetime address Thursday, Obama noted that nearly a dozen commanders-in-chief before him have acted unilaterally over the past half century on some facet of immigration reform.
Republicans are not buying it.
“The constitution does not grant the president the power to act as a one-man legislature by appealing to ‘tradition,’” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus fumed on Twitter.
Under the new rules, people living and working illegally in the country and who meet the criteria can apply for deferred deportation from next spring.
The political firestorm unleashed by Obama does not bode well for relations between Congress and the White House in the coming months.
Boehner provided no specifics about Republican countermeasures, but others have laid out options, including seeking to defund the offices responsible for carrying out Obama’s efforts.
Lawmakers should push back against Obama’s “illegal power-grab,” said Republican Senator John McCain, who helped craft immigration legislation that passed the Senate but died in the Republican House.
| Immigration row fuels early 2016 US presidential race WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (AFP) -When President Barack Obama unveiled his immigration plan and Republican rivals howled their disapproval, the drama signaled not just a clash of political positions: it kicked off the 2016 presidential campaign. Several likely Republican White House contenders — and a very prominent Democrat, Hillary Clinton — provided some of the most visible early reactions to the president’s controversial executive order. Their statements helped draw the battle lines of Washington’s immigration warfare that is sure to extend all the way to the next national election, when Republicans will be seeking to end their eight-year White House drought. And how both parties handle the deeply divisive issue may ultimately help decide who their next presidential nominees will be. “I support the president’s decision to begin fixing our broken immigration system and focus finite resources on deporting felons rather than families,” Clinton, the 2016 Democratic frontrunner, said in a statement that earned attention in part for the swiftness of its release after Obama’s announcement. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a potential presidential challenger from the left, also said action was needed due to House Republicans failing to act after the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill last year. Republicans claim they want to return the presidency to its constitutional principles and leave the legislating to Congress, a paramount guidepost for conservatives who feel Obama has abused his executive authority. “President Obama is not above the law and has no right to issue executive amnesty,” Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite for 2016, said of Obama’s plan to temporarily shield millions of undocumented migrants from deportation. “I will not sit idly by and let the president bypass Congress and our Constitution.” |