BALITANG America cited reports that President Barack Obama could issue an executive order on immigration by early September, which would impact the lives of qualified undocumented immigrants, including many Filipinos.
White House Spokesman Josh Earnest reportedly hinted on this last Monday, stating that this executive action could include allowing these undocumented immigrants to legally work in the United States.
Critics of President Obama argue that this goes against a longstanding law that prohibits tourists and undocumented immigrants from legally working in America. They contend this is tantamount to giving ‘amnesty” to the people who broke the law.
However, Earnest said even if the President decides to use his executive power before Congress goes back to work from its August recess on September 8, Obama will still be happy to have these executive actions be superseded by passing the “commonsense” Senate Immigration Reform Bill that passed more than a year ago to help fix the broken immigration system of the United States.
The border crisis intensifies with thousands of youth and children from Central America illegally crossing the border in search of greener pastures in America, yet the prospect of passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill looms. Democrats and Republicans remain divided with their divergent prescriptions to solve the crisis, and the nation’s immigration system remains broken.
President Barack Obama asked for $3.7 Billion in emergency funds to help solve the border crisis, which has now been deemed as a humanitarian crisis. As the Washington Post reported, more than 52,000 unaccompanied minors and 39,000 women with children have been caught on the southern border this year alone. Most have come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Obama’s funding proposal hopes to give Department of Health and Human Services $1.8 billion to provide shelter and care to the immigrants. The Justice and Homeland Security departments, would get a combined $1.6 billion to handle enforcement.
Some $300 million will be allocated to the State Department to help the Central American countries repatriate their citizens and create advertising campaigns about the dangers of placing children in the hands of smuggling cartels.
But Republicans disagree with the President and the Democrats’ prescription on how to solve the problem. They contend that Obama must stop the influx of illegal immigrants to the border and make sure that the entire border is secure, before focusing on the tens of thousands who are already in detention facilities.
Republicans and their conservative supporters argue that the Obama funding proposal is a “non-starter,” and “seeks to address the symptoms, not the cause.” They contend that Obama “should rescind his anti-enforcement policies and demonstrate a commitment to implementing existing law.”
Hence, the Republican-led House managed to get enough support in Congress for funding bills that would just focus on deporting the children that have crossed the border illegally.
These bills seek to revise a 2008 anti-human trafficking law passed during the Bush Administration that would make it easier to deport unaccompanied undocumented children from Central America.
This law was enacted to protect immigrant children from sex traffickers trying to bring them to the United States. It required judges to hold hearings for young immigrants from neighboring countries (except Mexico and Canada), preventing them from possibly getting turned away at the border. The Washington Post reports say this law has partly been blamed for the delay in the removal proceedings of these unaccompanied minors.
Aside from seeking to amend this law, the Republican bills would also reimburse governors who deploy their National Guard troops to the border.
Another bill would also put a stop to President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or DACA. This program has already allowed about 600,000 young undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the country.
In response, House Democrats slammed Republicans for these bills, which they say “not only tear families apart, but also dismiss a crisis that has become a big humanitarian concern.”
Democrats in Congress remind voters that if they want a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill to pass, which would give about 11 million undocumented immigrants a chance to gain legal status in America — and eventually even a pathway to citizenship — they need to vote more Democrats into the House of Representatives.
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
