President Barack Obama announced Thursday sweeping changes through executive action that will allow millions of illegal immigrants to gain protection from deportation, saying the separation of families or the oppression of low-wage immigrant workers is “not who we are as Americans.”
From the Wall Street Journal:
The plan will give more than 4 million illegal immigrants the chance to apply for work permits and a temporary reprieve from deportation. People who have been in the U.S. for at least five years and are parents of citizens or legal permanent residents would be eligible to apply. The White House said nearly a million more could benefit through other new or expanded programs. The president also is narrowing the group of people who would be subject to deportation, in what the White House said was an effort to focus enforcement resources on gang members, serious criminals and those who crossed the border after Jan. 1, 2014.
Mr. Obama’s plan contained only minor benefits for businesses that crave more visas for foreign workers and which have lobbied unsuccessfully for action in Congress. A new program will expand immigration options for foreign entrepreneurs who meet certain criteria. But White House officials said they opted against a plan, favored by high-tech companies, to make visas available from those unused in prior years, after concluding they couldn’t justify it legally.
Currently, about 11 million undocumented persons live in the U.S. While the executive action taken by Mr. Obama expanded the deportation deferral program to benefit an additional 270,000 young immigrants, sometimes called Dreamers, brought to the U.S. illegally as children, it does not give shelter to the parents of these young people.
There are some who believe that Obama’s action on immigration reform will hurt Black employment.
Read more here.
