Republicans called it lawless and unconstitutional, Democrats called it bold and meaningful.
President Obama’s announcement that 5 million illegal immigrants would be spared deportation and permitted to apply for work permits generated anger from the GOP. But it elicited satisfaction from Democrats, whose base of Latino voters had been clamoring for the president to change the nation’s immigration policy ever since it became clear that Congress would not pass comprehensive immigration reform this year.
“We did it,” Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who had been pushing for Obama to stop non-criminal deportations, said in a televised message to constituents Thursday night. “We worked so hard to achieve relief for families from tragic deportations.”
Democratic leaders took the position that the president had little choice but to act on his own because House Republicans had refused to take up a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
“President Obama knows that so many undocumented people living in the United States simply can’t wait any longer for the protections they deserve,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said after Obama’s Thursday evening announcement.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and one of the most ardent opponents of Obama’s legalization move, issued a strongly-worded statement accusing Obama of breaking the law.
“The president is providing an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants with Social Security numbers, photo IDs and work permits,” Sessions said, “allowing them to now take jobs directly from struggling Americans during a time of record immigration, low wages, and high joblessness.”
Obama, Sessions added, “is endangering our entire constitutional order.”
Republicans in Congress are plotting how to respond legislatively to the president, with intense debate focused on whether they should attempt to use spending legislation to try to defund Obama’s immigration directive.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that lawmakers are considering “a variety of options,” but that “Congress will act” in January, when the GOP takes the Senate majority, to try to counter Obama’s action.
Across the Capitol, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made the same commitment.
“While House Republicans will still work to do everything we can to move the country forward, it is our obligation and responsibility to fight this brazen power grab that doesn’t solve the real problems,” McCarthy said Thursday night.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, provided few specifics as to how Republicans would try to stop Obama.
“We will not shrink from this duty, because our allegiance lies with the American people,” Boehner said after Obama’s announcement. ”We will listen to them, work with our members, and protect the Constitution.”
But Democrats say Obama did not act outside of his authority, pointing to similar actions regarding deportations and immigration policy taken by past presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
“The president’s actions fall well within the clear constitutional and legal authority of his office, and the well-established precedent set by every president since Eisenhower,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
It’s unclear whether Obama’s action will make it impossible for a Republican-led Congress to pass immigration reform in 2015. Boehner said if Obama acted unilaterally it would “poison the well” for legislative immigration reform.
But Senate Republicans who helped craft the bipartisan immigration reform bill that passed in 2013 believe Congress should tackle immigration in spite of Obama’s action.
“I think we have an independent duty, apart from anything Obama does, to fix immigration,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told the Examiner.
