Supreme Court Ruling on Obama’s Immigration Plan

The Supreme Court announced tuesday, January 19th that it will hear, and decide, the case that is blocking President Obama’s immigration plan for expanded deferred action for young persons and for the parents of Green Card holders and U.S. citizens who are in the U.S. illegally. This means that we will have a decision probably by June of this year, with plenty of time before Obama’s replacement takes office in January, 2017.

If the Court allows Obama’s plan to move forward, it will mean more than a million people will move from the shadows and into the legal working population of the United States. In Texas alone, it is estimated that 183,000 young people are eligible for the expanded version of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and 560,000 parents would be eligible for the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Either plan would provide work permits for those eligible, and prevent their deportation. There are an estimated 1.4 million people living in Texas with no legal immigration status.

Obama says he took this action because Congress, controlled by Republicans, refuses to take any action on immigration, taking their orders from the far right-wing members of their party who oppose almost all immigration reform of any kind and like Donald Trump, favor mass deportations and border walls.

If the Court refuses to allow the program, even though it is similar to actions taken by past presidents, including Ronald Reagan, nothing has really changed. It may push many hispanic voters to the polls to voice their anger at the lack of reform.

If the Republicans win the White House, and reverse the existing DACA program as they have promised, and the new program if the Court allows it, they will become the Grinch in the Christmases of all undocumented aliens in the U.S., and put hundreds of thousands of young persons, almost all of whom speak little Spanish and who know no other country than this one into deportation status, along with the parents of Permanent Residents and U.S. Citizens, ripping families apart. I can’t help but think they all hear “Somos Mas Americanos” by Los Tigres Del Norte playing in their worried heads.

 

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