A defiant President Obama on Thursday night will unveil his plan to shield 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, going around Congress on immigration reform and stoking a broader showdown with Republicans over the limits of his powers.
The presidential directive defers deportations for roughly 4.1 million immigrants in the country illegally whose children are American citizens or permanent residents. Under the executive action, the parents must have lived in the U.S. for at least five years to receive work permits.
“That’s the real amnesty — leaving this broken system the way it is,” Obama will say, according to early excerpts of his speech Thursday night. “Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I’m describing is accountability — a commonsense, middle ground approach.”
The details of the president’s plan were provided to the Washington Examiner in advance of the president’s televised address to the nation at 8 p.m.
The most sweeping use of executive power on immigration in decades serves as a rallying cry for Republicans and Democrats alike, with conservatives insistent that Obama is overstepping his constitutional authority and progressives emboldened by the president for moving forward in the face of gridlock on Capitol Hill.
Obama also is expanding a program that granted certain Dream Act-eligible immigrants a reprieve from deportation, saying that minors who arrived in the U.S. before 2010 would not face prosecution. Previously, Obama limited such protections to young immigrants who arrived in the country before 2007.
However, the parents of so-called Dreamers do not qualify for the new benefits to be outlined by the president. And those given reprieves from deportation are not eligible to enroll in Obamacare.
The federal government will begin taking applications from undocumented immigrants early next year.
The unilateral action is part of a broader campaign by the Obama administration to reserve deportations for the most violent criminals, not those convicted of lesser offenses.
Obama will outline his immigration approach after delaying the move this summer, part of a failed attempt to insulate vulnerable Democrats ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.
The White House insists that the president’s actions are within his legal authority, pointing to previous presidents flexing their executive muscle on immigration.
“The actions I’m taking are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican president and every Democratic president for the past half century,” he will say. “And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.”
Obama will frame his actions as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, but Republicans are quick to point out that the president has repeatedly said he lacked the legal authority to unilaterally defer deportations.
“Imposing his will unilaterally may seem tempting. It may serve him politically in the short term. But he knows that it will make an already broken system even more broken,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said ahead of the president’s remarks. “And he knows that this is not how democracy is supposed to work. Because he told us so himself.”
