President Barack Obama will announce this week that he is shielding about 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and will travel to Las Vegas for an event Friday to promote it, according to sources familiar with the planning.

Senior administration officials began calling immigration reform proponents Wednesday to fill them in on plans for the rollout and the details of the proposal.

The executive actions will cover 4 million undocumented immigrants who would qualify for deferred deportations by using criteria such as longevity in the United States and family ties, according to sources briefed on the discussions. Another 1 million would receive protection through other means, two sources said.

There will be no special protections for farm workers or parents of Dreamers — two categories that groups had lobbied hard for — because there were concerns about those pieces clearing the legal bars, sources said. However, the administration officials noted in their calls, many people who fall into those categories would qualify if they have children who are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. Dreamers, in contrast, are undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country by their parents as minors.

Obama could announce his plans in a prime time speech Thursday, the senior administration officials told advocates, though it’s unclear that the speech will be broadcast at that time. Top aides, meanwhile, are suggesting that the president will go big.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson confirmed Wednesday that Obama will make his announcement “in the coming days” and that the reforms the president puts forward will be “comprehensive.” Speaking at an event hosted by the New Democrat Network, a left-leaning think tank, Johnson said the president has “fairly wide latitude” to act under the law.

“He’s going to go as far as he can under the law,” Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz said Tuesday. Still, the administration acknowledges that there are limits to what he can do. “He’s going to be the first to say that it doesn’t fix everything that’s broken.”

Dawn Le, of the Alliance for Citizenship, offered a hint at the timing in an email that the AFL-CIO’s Jeff Hauser forwarded to reporters before asking them to “ignore” the previous note.

“We hear there will be a prime time Thursday evening announcement (to preview) and full unveiling in Vegas on Friday,” Le wrote. “Unclear whether Thursday night content will be what is ‘celebratory,’ but Friday will be where we need a lot of energy guaranteed.”

The president’s turn to executive action comes after pushing House Republicans for more than a year to take up the immigration bill passed by the Senate in June 2013. Obama had long held out hope that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would bring the bill to the floor, but when the speaker told the president that he would not be holding a vote on it in 2014, Obama vowed in a Rose Garden speech to act on his own.
Obama had initially planned to announce executive actions on immigration at the end of the summer but in September the White House said he would put off a final decision until after Election Day, amid Democrats’ concerns that it would create another complication on the campaign trail ahead of the midterm elections.

With a nine-day trip to Asia and Australia behind him and Thanksgiving on the horizon, Obama has spent this week working out the final details of his announcement. The trip to Las Vegas brings him full circle from January 2013, when he launched a push pressuring Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, repeating the mantra “now is the time.”

He spoke then at Del Sol High School, the same venue that local press reports say the White House has chosen for Friday’s announcement.

Republicans have been preparing to respond in large part by accusing Obama of overreach and by pointing to his repeated statements last year that he did not have the authority to act on certain pieces of immigration reform.

“If ‘Emperor Obama’ ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue – and many others,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said Wednesday.

Initial Democratic responses are more positive.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Wednesday that Obama’s action would put him in the company of “great” presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, who both used their executive authorities to expand rights for African Americans. “I think that President Obama ought to put himself alongside these … great presidents and use [an] executive order to do something big on immigration,” he said on MSNBC.
The legality of the president’s actions, Clyburn added, is up to the courts and not Congress. “Let’s let the courts decide whether it’s constitutional. That’s not for Congress to decide, that’s why we have courts to make that decision,” he said.

If you're here illegally then get the fuck out and wait your turn like my grandmother, aunt, and every other legal immigrant has done

Quote from: IcyWind on November 19, 2014, 02:14:57 PM

Quote from: Kinder on November 19, 2014, 02:13:08 PM

If you're here illegally then get the fuck out and wait your turn like my grandmother, aunt, and every other legal immigrant has done

Great policy. No problems whatsoever with this line of thinking.

As I said, we don't fucking enforce the current laws.