President Barack Obama’s announcement Thursday certainly shook the ground in Washington, D.C. — and that is a good thing.
We have been living with a nightmarish immigration system for more than 25 years. I know this because my clients and I deal with it every day. This broken system not only limits economic growth, but destroys families, punishes businesses, clogs our courts and jails, and drives away talent from America.
The broken legal immigration system actually creates illegal immigration by not adequately providing for the supply to meet the American demand for labor, particularly in agricultural and service jobs. Everyone of sane mind understands we must do something to fix it, stop illegal immigration, stop employers from hiring undocumented workers, and use a good immigration law to support the American economy and families.
It has been more than 13 years since politicians have had a renewed push to “fix” immigration law, since George W. Bush campaigned on and promised a fix to our current immigration system. A bipartisan group of senators passed a bill in July 2013 that would strengthen our borders, create more interior enforcement and fix the legal immigration system. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated this bill would create billions of dollars of economic activity. Yet this common-sense solution to fixing the system has been sitting it the House of Representatives for more than 500 days without a vote.
The Congress and Constitution give the executive branch the duty to enforce the law, and the authority to use discretion in its enforcement. Congress has also written immigration law very broadly and relies on the executive branch to interpret its frequently vague laws through regulations and policies. Congress has also given the president only limited funds to carry out this enforcement. Yet, like every prosecutor, the president has to decide which laws to enforce, and how to enforce them with a limited budget.
As every president before him has done, Obama simply announced changes his administration is making in immigration regulations and policy (not laws) and enforcement, with the authority provided him by Congress.
These changes include an incentive for undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and residents to come forward, identify themselves, go through a background check and pay a fee; in return, they receive a temporary work permit with no permanent immigration status. He also has expanded deferred action for individuals who came to the U.S. under the age of 16 and graduate from high school here. It allows them to obtain a temporary work permit, again with no permanent status. These two changes alone are estimated to affect millions of families in the United States, including several hundred thousand in Georgia. We all know these families; they are our neighbors, our friends and the people who work with us daily.
Obama also announced a greater focus on enforcement — which you can do when you are not deporting people for a broken tail light. This focus puts even more emphasis on the border, heightens interior enforcement, and ensures that all undocumented immigrants with serious criminal convictions are held and deported much faster. To date, illegal immigration is at its lowest level in decades. These steps will reduce it further.
The executive action adds greater flexibility to immigration regulations by allowing investors and entrepreneurs to obtain quicker legal status in the United States. The plan also increases the time period graduating foreign students can work in the U.S., thereby helping to ease the problem of high demand for the artificially limited H-1B visa. There are more than 20 different changes to immigration regulations and policy, all within the president’s purview, that he is modifying or extending to ease the pain caused by the broken immigration system.
Many do not like that the president acted without Congress, particularly without the House of Representatives. Yet members of Congress can very easily resolve their concerns today — or in January, before any parts of the executive action are effective — by passing an immigration bill.
We all know you lose the right to complain when you do not offer your own solution. Perhaps Obama’s executive action is what is needed to get Congress to finally act in concert to pass immigration legislation that works for America and its people. We can only hope.
Charles H. Kuck is an immigration attorney in Atlanta and a former national president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
