President Obama: Please sign an executive order stopping the arrest and deportation of immigrant youth.
That, in short, is the demand of undocumented immigrants sitting in at his Denver campaign headquarters. And they are threatening to spread the protest nationwide, to the chagrin of some Obama supporters.
The President faces a tough challenge from Mitt Romney, a true anti-immigrant hardliner. If immigrants’ rights is your issue, Obama is your clear choice. Yet he has not always delivered.
He promised a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but “la promesa Obama” was never fulfilled. He promised the Dream Act, a path to citizenship for undocumented youth. However, when the votes were counted at the end of the 2010 Senate session, five Democrats joined 36 Republicans in voting against it — and the Dream Act failed.
And though he has also promised to review deportation orders, The New York Times recently reported that only some 2% of the more than 400,000 open deportation cases have been closed.
The Dream Act would have granted permanent legal status only to undocumented immigrants brought here before the age of 16 — and even then, only to those who spent two years in college or in the military. One would think that compassion for innocent children would make support for the Dream Act an easy call. Not in these partisan times.
Nevertheless, the President has it in his power to let Dreamers stay, work and try to find a way on their own to get legal status. With the stroke of a pen, he could declare an end to fear and provide hope for the estimated 700,000 Dream Act-eligible immigrants.
Here’s how an Dream Executive Order might look: To qualify, an applicant must have come here before 16 and not yet have reached 35. A conviction for any crime involving theft, violence or fraud would serve to disqualify.
The Dreamers would get employment authorization and travel permission. Pending that application, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would suspend their deportation.
Those who qualified could get green cards — if they met the same requirements as other green card applicants.
Does the President really have this power? He does. Immigration enforcement is squarely in the hands of the executive branch — and the President, of course, heads that branch. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a name for the benefit the Dreamers are demanding — “deferred action status.” Usually it is granted on a case-by-case basis, but Obama has the authority to grant it on a group-wide basis.
So why doesn’t he? Because of politics, pure and simple: Helping undocumented immigrants could cost him votes in swing states, or so his advisers surely think.
But as far as policy is concerned, executive action to protect deserving youth is not without precedent.
In 1990, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square incident, President George H. W. Bush ordered a halt to deportations and granted employment authorization to Chinese nationals.
The demand for protection came mainly from Chinese college students. Of course, the Republican Party back then had a much more welcoming attitude toward immigrants. Immigration was a real policy concern, not an ideological football.
Now, Republicans denounce every legislative effort to help even the most deserving of immigrants as “amnesty.” Maybe if most of most of the Dreamers weren’t dark-skinned, Republicans might be more sympathetic.
As the great anti-slavery leader Frederick Douglass taught, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Obama has the power. The students are making the demand. I wish them Godspeed.
