Obama’s Immigration Temptation: His Executive Order Would Make Durable Reform Harder to Pass.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/obamas-immigration-temptation-1415750649
President Obama will set the tone for his final years in office with his looming decision on an immigration executive order. These columns supported reform long before Mr. Obama, and we still do, but if he does act on his own he’s likely to harm the immigration cause and his own legacy.
Liberal activists and Democrats are pressuring Mr. Obama to broaden his controversial 2012 executive action, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children to stay in the country and work. The details of his next edict are still secret, but presumably he’d extend the same provisions of his 2012 order to a larger swath of the undocumented population. Perhaps to millions of adults.
The political case from a Democratic point of view—the only kind Mr. Obama seems to understand—goes like this. Republicans will never pass reform, so he has to act by himself to accomplish something before he leaves office. His base will be pleased, and he’ll divide Republicans. The anti-immigration right may even blow a gasket and further alienate Asian- and Hispanic-Americans between now and the 2016 election. What’s to lose?
The answer is plenty. On the merits, Mr. Obama’s executive order can’t come close to fixing America’s broken immigration laws. The most he can do is to legalize the immigration status of several million people. This would let them remain in the U.S., but it wouldn’t offer a green card or path to citizenship. That requires Congress.
An executive order also can’t increase the number of visas, which means it can’t reduce the future flow of illegal immigrants by providing more legal pathways to enter the U.S. So no new science-graduate visas for tech workers, no visas for farm workers to end the labor shortage in agriculture, and no guest-worker program to create a flexible labor market for other jobs in a growing U.S. economy. Mr. Obama is offering amnesty without addressing the root cause of border-crossing economic migration.
As for the politics, we think there’s a good chance Republicans would pass immigration reform in some form in the next two years. The leadership wants to do it, and a majority of the rank and file privately want to vote for it to end the debate. Most realize the growing importance of minority voters to the GOP’s chances of winning the Presidency.
The reforms would have to pass Congress in piecemeal fashion, rather than one giant bill like the Senate passed in 2013: a single bill each for border security, interior enforcement, guest-worker program, high-tech visas, a path to citizenship, and so on. But this makes sense because it’s easier to build House majorities for narrower legislation, especially with voters today so skeptical of Washington.
An executive order, by contrast, could empower the GOP’s yahoo wing and make it harder for even these piecemeal bills to pass. GOP leaders would feel obliged to pass legislation to block the action, and the immigration battle royale would sap much of the political capital Mr. Obama has left on Capitol Hill. Mr. Obama could protect his executive order as long as he’s President, but the next President could erase it with a stroke of his pen. Only a reform passed by Congress and signed by a President is politically durable.
Alas, Mr. Obama is likely to follow the same partisan course he has pursued throughout his Presidency. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Friday that Mr. Obama will proceed with an executive order unless the House acts by December on the reform the Senate passed last year. The President knows that’s a dead letter, which suggests he’s looking for a confrontation.
If he does issue an executive order, we hope Republicans don’t fall for his political trap. He and many Democrats want Republicans to appear to be anti-immigrant. They want the GOP to dance to the Steve King-Jeff Sessions blow-a-gasket caucus.
The smart play is to stay cool and keep working on the piecemeal reform that would make Mr. Obama’s executive order superfluous. The GOP could offer legal status on terms that provide more long-term economic security while also reducing the flow of future illegals. Everyone knows the U.S. is never going to deport 11 million men, women and children, so some form of legalization is inevitable.
If Mr. Obama follows his familiar partisan script, Republicans have a chance to stand up for the rule of law and America’s economic well-being by passing immigration reform the constitutional way.
Comments are closed.
