November 2014 Immigration News At a Glance
Written by Kara DeDonato
Our November News Digest takes a look at the midterm election results and their potential ramifications for immigration reform, before turning to the long-awaited executive action announced by President Obama on November 20. The Digest concludes with a look at the impact of Obama’s executive action in New York, and other developments in New York City.
What the midterm election results say about immigration reform
The midterm elections were a major victory for the GOP as Republicans are now set to have control of both the House and the Senate. A Gallup poll conducted after the elections also reported that more Americans now identify with Republicans than Democrats.
There is no overall consensus on how the midterm election results will affect immigration reform going forward (a presidential executive action notwithstanding). The conservative base is most likely to continue advocating for increased border security over other immigration issues, as reported by US News and PBS News Hour. The PBS News Hour debate between Brad Botwin, director of Help Save Maryland, and Christina Jimenez, co-founder of United We Dream, is a particularly interesting read.
News outlets across the country analyzed the factors contributing to the Democrats’ loss. Many suggested that Obama’s delay on immigration reform had a negative impact for Democrats, despite the fact that Obama purportedly delayed any action in an effort to help his party. Newsweek ran an article entitled, “Was Immigration Delay Obama’s Biggest Mistake?,” which identifies a chain of broken promises on immigration as the partial cause for the defeat of Democrats in the midterms. The Washington Post and NPR similarly commented that executive action may have hurt some already vulnerable Democratic candidates, but could also have boosted the Latino vote.
Exit polling, however, suggested that immigration reform was not a pressing issue for voters, as reported in The Christian Science Monitor and CNN. Voters were more concerned with the economy and by the dysfunctional government and politics in Washington. That being said, immigration and the Latino vote are expected to remain determining factors in the 2016 presidential election.
The impact of executive action on immigration
In the days immediately following the midterm elections, Obama announced that he would move forward with his executive action on immigration reform, “dismissing calls from inside and outside his party to allow Congress to debate the issue for a year” (The Washington Post). Opposition from the GOP was strong leading up to the enactment of the president’s executive action; House Speaker John Boehner accused Obama of “poisoning the well” and Republicans threatened that an executive action could affect the confirmation of administration appointees, as reported in these articles of USA Today and Time.
On November 20, President Obama finally announced his long-awaited executive action – a full text of his speech can be found here. The core of the presidential plan addresses the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States and seeks to provide millions of them with protection from deportation as well as work permits. It is important to note that the action does not grant citizenship or a pathway to citizenship; its is a series of measures providing temporary relief from deportation and work authorization to certain categories of undocumented immigrants in the United States. In particular, one of the measures announced in Obama’s executive action is the extension of the DACA program (with the removal of the age cap), and the creation of a new program similar to DACA for the parents of children who are US citizens or permanent resident. Detailed information is available here (or here in Spanish).
According to The New York Times, up to 5 million people could be eligible for relief provided under Obama’s executive action. The Pew Research Center reports that undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central American countries will benefit the most: “more than half of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico (55%) and Central America (51%) will be eligible for deportation relief.”
In his statement, Obama also expressly called attention to the situation of foreign students at US universities, highly skilled workers, and entrepreneurs. As this article in Forbes reports, a second track of the executive action aims to facilitate legal access to work in the US for these individuals. Another Forbes article provides excellent insight into the current issues faced by applicants for work permits in the United States, and posits solutions for the backlog of applicants and visa shortages.
On the flipside of the executive action, President Obama will also strengthen border patrol and speed up the deportation process. The latter measures are sure to garner continued attention from immigrant activists and advocates. Throughout the month of November, Obama in fact received considerable criticism over deportation policies (see articles in the Epoch Times and Politico). In Foreign Affairs, Professor Laura Carasik argued in an article entitled “Deadly Deportations: How Obama’s Immigration Policies Break the Law” that immigrants flagged for deportation are not made aware of their rights to protection under asylum law.
Overall, Obama’s executive action is seen as a step in the right direction by immigrant advocates, even if it still fails to resolve some of the biggest issues posed by the broken immigration system. Additionally, the relief provided by the executive action is only temporary, and could easily be overturned by the next president.
As predicted, the GOP reacted unfavorably to the executive action, with John Boehner accusing President Obama of acting like a “king,” and threats of shutting down the government. The American public, on the other hand, seems to be divided at best, or ambivalent at worst, according to Bloomberg News.
Zooming in on New York City immigration news
Tens of thousands of immigrants in New York State will be eligible to obtain work permits under Obama’s executive action, according to this Public News Service article. The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs tweeted that as many as 120,000 could benefit from the action in New York City alone. Hundreds of thousands could now be eligible for Medicaid as well, because New York is “one of the few states to afford health benefits to non-citizens” (Capital New York).
Mayor Bill de Blasio also moved forward with legislation limiting the power of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) federal agency within city limits. Two bills have already been signed by the City Council and, on November 5, Mayor de Blasio held the public hearing required before he could sign the bills into law. As explained in this article, the two bills reduce the city’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities and remove ICE agents from Rikers Island. Nisha Agarwal, Commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, indicated that the two bills would prevent between 2,000 to 3,000 immigrants from being held in city custody every year.
