WASHINGTON, D.C. — Saying the immigration system “is broken and everybody knows it,” President Barack Obama moved forward Friday with the immigration overhauls he’s making through executive order without Congressional approval.
“My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too,” he said during a national address Thursday detailing the executive actions he was planning to sign on Friday in Las Vegas, Nev. to extend temporary legal status to as many as five million undocumented immigrants.
“If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law,” Obama said.
The plan would include 4.1 million undocumented parents and families of U.S. citizens who have been in the United States more than five years without a criminal record; 300,000 so-called “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. illegally as children with current age limits dropped; and 400,000 highly-skilled workers who will be eligible for visas.
According to the White House, there is nothing in the plan to create a permanent pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
The criticisms came quick.
“There are those, like this President, who are willing to forgive and forget those who broke the law to get here and I am believer that we are a nation of laws. We should be a nation of law-abiders,” Republican Third District Congressman-Elect Evan Jenkins said on Friday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
“He (President Obama) has decided to change, amend, bend and even break the law to further his political agenda and immigration’s just the next example of a guy who clearly wants to do it his way, is unwilling to work with Congress.”
Republican U.S. Senator-Elect Shelley Moore Capito agreed. “He’s basically usurping, I think, the prerogatives of the House and Senate to set the policies and then he can pick or choose whether he’s going to veto. We’re the voice of the people,” she said.
Capito said President Obama needed to give the new Congress a chance to address the immigration issue in the New Year.
“I think that he is, sort of, sticking a finger in the eye of a good faith effort for us to try to begin an era of working together and solving problems, negotiating the issues and I think that is a terrible message,” Capito said.
It could take as long as six months before the terms of the executive action fully take effect, potentially giving the U.S. Senate and U.S. House time to pass legislation to replace the order.
“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,” President Obama said on Thursday night.
Jenkins has been nominated to serve on the influential U.S. House Appropriations Committee in the New Year. “The President has the power of the pen and he’s using that. We’ve got the power of the purse, we need to use that,” he said.