The Obama administration just announced a massive executive action. It's going to protect
about 4 million unauthorized immigrants from deportation, and it's going to let them work
legally in the U.S. Since 9/11, the number of deportations has risen drastically. Since
President Obama came into office, there have been about 400,000 deportations every single
year. But we're not going to deport all 11 million unauthorized immigrants, so given
that choices have to get made about who gets deported and who doesn't, the administration
has decided that it doesn't make sense to deport people who have lived in the U.S. for
several years, who have not committed crimes, and who have families here that they need
to take care of. For the last decade or so the unauthorized immigrant population has
been really well settled in the U.S. As of 2013, almost 2/3 of unauthorized adults had
been here for 10 years or more and a least 4 million have children who are U.S. citizens.
Those are the people who the Obama administration has decided to protect with this new action.
These protections already apply to a group of younger unauthorized immigrants called
DREAMers because they would have benefited from the DREAM Act. We know that Republicans
are extremely angry about this. There are lots of pro-immigration-enforcement people
out there who say that there should really be a threat of random deportation on any individual
unauthorized immigrant, but it is not legitimate to say that it's somehow illegal for the president
to decide who to deport and who not to deport -- plenty of presidents have done that in
the past. George H.W. Bush gave similar protections to family members of people who were going
to become US citizens it was a smaller number of people, but about an equal percentage of
the unauthorized population. This won't give anyone official legal status and it won't
put anyone on a path to citizenship. Only Congress can do that. But it allows them to
apply for something that promises they won't be deported for 3 years, apply for a work
permit, and millions of families will know for sure, for the first time in years, that
they won't be torn apart.