President Obama will make sweeping changes to U.S. immigration policy when he announces his plan Thursday night to unilaterally protect roughly 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The most far-reaching component of the president’s plan is to keep about 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally from being deported. An estimated 4 million of them would qualify for relief based on having children who are citizens or legal residents or because of the length of time they have been in the country, multiple sources familiar with the president’s plan confirmed.
It’s not clear whether the president would require those being shielded from deportation to have lived in the country for five or 10 years, timelines previously reported.
However, those awarded deportation reprieves would not be eligible for Obamacare benefits, sources confirmed.
Millions of undocumented immigrants also would receive work permits, perhaps the most controversial provision of the executive action. Republicans argue that such measures would take jobs away from unemployed Americans.
Notably, the work permits would not be granted to family members of so-called Dreamers, young illegal immigrants who entered the country after they were born.
Among the other provisions of Obama’s blueprint is the replacement of Secure Communities, a law-enforcement program that checks the fingerprints of all inmates with the Department of Homeland Security to verify their immigration status. Obama is also expected to issue an unknown number of additional H1-B visas, something long sought by Silicon Valley and technology companies.
Politico first reported those measures on Wednesday.
Obama will announce his plan during a prime-time speech to the nation Thursday and then travel to Las Vegas to promote his actions on Friday.
The initial details of the executive action sent ripple waves across Washington Wednesday, with Republicans insistent that Obama had already killed any hope of bipartisan compromise with GOP leaders ahead of the new Congress convening in January.
“What incentive do we have to work with him?” complained one Republican Senate aide. “He is just doing whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter what the country wants.”
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday found that nearly half of all respondents didn’t support Obama addressing immigration through executive order. Just 38 percent of those surveyed endorsed his approach.
Regardless, the battle will likely play out in the courts, as judges will be forced to weigh in on whether the president is overstepping his constitutional authority.
And Republicans have noted Obama’s previous refusal to take executive action on the issue.
“I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules,” Obama said in October 2010. “I can’t simply ignore laws that are out there. I’ve got to work to make sure that they are changed.”
The president delayed taking executive action on immigration reform until after the midterm elections, hoping to protect vulnerable Democratic senators. The gamble didn’t pay off, as Republicans easily took back the upper chamber.
Obama later Wednesday will host a dinner with 18 lawmakers — none of them Republican — to discuss his coming announcement.
