Yesterday President Obama, with months of premeditation, stepped into a huge pile of dog poop. It was next to impossible to tease out the details of the executive order while listening to his address. Everything of importance was buried beneath a barrage of melting-pot platitudes. Here is what I gathered from poking around later in various news sources:
- About 40% of America’s undocumented immigrants—those residing here for 5 years or more—will be given the right to remain here “temporarily” (read “indefinitely”). Any who apply for work permits will be granted them, provided they have never been convicted of a felony. Presumably this includes drug crimes as well as murder, arson, rape, and armed robbery.
- Such sweeping action on immigration policy has never been taken without benefit of legislation. This was a quantum leap in executive authority, which has heretofore been focused on correcting abuses of or danger to narrow immigrant populations. Public opinion has always been supportive, but it’s not supportive this time. Never mind the Republicans who are initiating a suit and contemplating various forms of legislative sabotage. Prepare for gridlock on steroids.
- Farms workers are excluded whether or not they’ve lived here for at least 5 years. So much for their chances for social mobility.
- Even though “Dreamers,” children brought here illegally by their parents, are protected from deportation, their parents are not. However, the parents of kids who were born here are protected. So some families can still be split up.
- No protected immigrant will qualify for Obamacare. So even though they can work openly and accumulate assets, their assets can be swept away by a serious illness, the same predicament they faced before Obama took action.
It also seems likely that many of our undocumented immigrants will not “come out of the shadows,” regardless of this opportunity. They have a measure of safety in the shadows, and they will fear that a future president will rescind the order, affording the deportation authorities with the names of everyone who applied for a work permit. I doubt any future president will have the bad judgment to rescind the order, but that’s irrelevant. Understandably, there’s plenty of paranoia out there.
Then there’s my paranoia. I see a Republican in the White House in 2017 or 2021. I see him—no GOP women allowed in the Oval Office!—making a speech about the Job Creators being over-regulated and paying far more than their fair share of taxes. Congress may not see it that way, but no matter. He can fix it with his pen, he will say. By executive order, a slew of regulations will cease to be enforced, and the IRS will cease to audit the tax returns of people making more than, say, $1,000,000 in any given year. The upside is that his successor will no doubt reverse it all, perhaps in time to save us from another deluge of white collar crime.
I think Obama has substantially added to his legacy—but not in a good way.
The Scratching Post 