Experts: Obama has options to deal with immigration

“In effect, the president is preparing to assume for himself the absolute power to set immigration law in America.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

What can President Barack Obama actually do without Congress to change U.S. immigration policies? A lot, it turns out.

There are some limits under federal law, and anything the White House ultimately decides to do may be challenged in court as unconstitutional.

But leading legal experts say the White House almost certainly could delay indefinitely efforts to deport millions of immigrants already in the U.S. illegally, and it could give them official work permits that would allow them to legally find jobs, obtain driver’s licenses and pay income taxes.

Here is what Obama could not do without approval from Congress: He couldn’t generally give large groups of immigrants permission to remain permanently in the United States, and he couldn’t grant them American citizenship. And he couldn’t generally make them eligible for federal or state social benefit programs, such as welfare payments, food stamps or the administration’s health care plans.

“There is prosecutorial discretion which can be exercised in these sorts of situations,” said Leon Rodriguez, a former Justice Department lawyer and the newly confirmed director for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. “In most enforcement realms, generally there is pretty broad discretion.” Rodriguez spoke earlier this week on Capitol Hill during an oversight hearing for the House Judiciary Committee.

With Congress declining to approve significant changes to immigration laws, the White House is hinting that Obama is considering broadening a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to temporarily shield from deportation many young immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and allow them to get a work permit.

Immigration reform advocates have been pushing to include parents of U.S. citizens and the parents of young immigrants already protected under the earlier program, which covers more than 700,000 immigrants so far.

All told, expanding the program could affect as many as 5 million immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally.

Republicans in Congress, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, have complained that Obama is failing to enforce U.S. laws by effectively disregarding illegal immigration.

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said Obama’s immigration policies are “undermining the fundamental constitutional principles that Congress creates the law and president is bound to enforce them.”

In a direct challenge to Obama’s policies, the Republican-led House on Friday night passed legislation that appeared designed to prevent those who’ve already gotten work permits under the deferred action program from renewing them, ultimately making them subject to deportation. With the Senate controlled by Democrats, the bill seemed unlikely to advance.

Obama said Friday that House Republicans were trying to pass the “most extreme and unworkable bills,” knowing they wouldn’t make it to his desk. On Friday night, the House approved a bill that would send migrant youths back home without hearings, a measure that also appeared destined to go nowhere in the Senate.

“That means while they’re out on vacation, I’m going to have to make some tough choices to meet the challenge, with or without Congress,” the president said.