Supreme Court Tie Deals Blow to Immigration Reform

Supreme Court Tie Deals Blow to Immigration Reform 1

The U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 Thursday over a challenge to President Obama’s immigration policy, leaving in place an appeals court ruling blocking a plan to shield millions of immigrants from deportation and allow them to work.

Various media reports point to the decision as adding more fuel to an already intensely heated political season. The New York Times reported the tie deals “a sharp blow to an ambitious program that Mr. Obama had hoped would become one of his central legacies. Instead, even as the court deadlocked, it amplified the already contentious election-year debate over the nation’s immigration policy and presidential power.”

 

“In the end, it is my firm belief that immigration is not something to fear.” – President Obama

The program would have:

* Focused on deporting criminals and terrorists.

* Allowed adults here illegally to remain if they meet certain residency requirements and have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
* Expanded another existing program that allows young people to stay in the country if they were brought here under age 16.
* Deferred deportations for three years for those qualified without offering permanent legal status.

 

Our founders conceived this country as a refuge for the world. Welcoming wave after wave of immigrants kept us youthful and dynamic and entrepreneurial,”

Obama took action to update immigration laws in 2014, citing years of frustration with a GOP-led Congress who had repeatedly declined to support bipartisan Senate legislation. A coalition of 26 states accused the president of ignoring administrative procedures for changing rules and of abusing the power of his office by circumventing Congress, and a preliminary injunction shut down the program while the legal case proceeded.

In the one sentence ruling, the justices said, “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court” — which the Huffington Post called “a sign that the court was sharply at odds along ideological lines.”

In his reaction to the ruling, Obama called the decision “heartbreaking” and suggested that the future of immigration reform will ultimately be decided by the voters.

“Our founders conceived this country as a refuge for the world. Welcoming wave after wave of immigrants kept us youthful and dynamic and entrepreneurial,” Obama said. “It has shaped our character and it has made us stronger. But for more than two decades now our immigration system, everybody acknowledges, has been broken. And the fact that the Supreme Court wasn’t able to issue a decision today doesn’t just set the system back further, it takes us further from the country that we aspire to be.”

Obama’s reaction also included a firm rebuke of Donald Trump and other Republican’s call to build a wall and deport 11 million people.

“In the end, it is my firm belief that immigration is not something to fear,” said Obama. “We don’t have to wall ourselves off from those who may not look like us right now or pray like we do or have a different last name because being an American is about something more than that. What makes us Americans are shared commitment to an ideal that all of us are created equal, all of us have a chance to make of our lives what we will.”

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