Obama’s executive action on illegal immigration: adding to the speculation

Since the announcement that President Obama would announce how he wants to use executive action to tackle illegal immigration, the political world has pounced upon the issue with every ounce of speculation it could muster. 

Casting aside fresh developments in the war on the Islamic State, the Russian-Ukraine Crisis, the global economy,  nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Ebola outbreak, and several other pressing issues, the media has decided conjecture on illegal immigration should be the top story of the day, even though there will no new revelations until Thursday night.

That said, action on illegal immigration is important and should be about the issue, not the politics.  For the political world, immigration is important, because the President is circumventing Congressional gridlock and America’s elected officials hate nothing more than having their power threatened.  

At the same time, President Obama may be in danger of overstepping his authority, even with whatever legal rationale his advisors have formulated.  Considering all the other critical issues Washington dysfunction has stalled action on, which have a larger impact on American citizens, immigration is probably not worth the power struggle for the American People.

Should predictions that Obama’s executive action will extend protection from deportation to between four and five million illegal immigrates prove correct, it will be very clear why the President waited until after the 2014 Mid Elections to announce his plan.  Holding true to Democratic stereotypes by sabotaging the chances of his fellow Party members, President Obama may well be about to turn immigration into the Obamacare of the 2016 election cycle.

Heeding the wisdom of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Democrats need to run on strong solutions-based economic platforms in 2016, but Obama’s action on illegal immigration may well undermine the ability of the Left to explain their often far more sophisticated way of approaching economic development.

When a Republican can say he plans to cut taxes, regulatory burdens, and other business costs to spur hiring by making businesses more successful then points to 5 million illegal immigrants given the right to take jobs away from Americans under Obama, his Democratic opponent will not even have a chance to rebuff this supposed “commonsense solution” or the facts of Obama’s efforts to address illegal immigration.

More importantly, the reason the argument will resonate so well with the American People is that they are scared while Washington only seems to make things worse.  Not only has the financial impact of the Great Recession traumatized the American People, the Country is facing a serious shift in its global socioeconomic standing, the world is filled with intensifying crises, and the world is abound with national security threats, Free Trade and outsourcing have already sent too many American jobs overseas. 

For the American People, seeing Washington give their jobs away to individuals who illegally immigrated to the US will be too much, especially since it has been tried before and failed to solve the underlying problems.  Not only does the United States have an illegal immigration problem and a long brewing jobs crisis fueling increased economic disparity, we have a hemispheric failure to foster security and economic development. 

A large part of the problem is that politicians rarely devise solutions to problems.  Instead, our national leaders have been forced to use regurgitated solutions that have had both successes and failures in the past, thus every “solution” on the table has both fans and critics who conflict when these solutions are adapted to solve novel problems that they may or may not be able to properly address.

Furthermore, what is lacking in America’s approach to dealing with illegal immigration is our failure to be a leader when it comes to the socioeconomic forces, i.e. poverty and violence, driving mass exoduses in Central and South America.  As such, the US needs to do more to address the long-term illegal immigration issue by reengaging our own hemisphere instead of trying to solve the problem at home with costly, ineffective band-aid solutions.