◼ Time to bring the immigration debate out of ‘the shadows’ - Peter Skerry/Weekly Standard
The predictable furor over President Obama’s executive order offering relief to approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants has obscured the fact that his initiative is much bolder in form than in content. Obama has gone to extraordinary lengths to offer less than what immigrant advocates have for years been insisting is an absolute necessity: full citizenship.
If Obama’s initiative should prove to be the first step on “the path to citizenship” for these undocumented, it is a hobbled and halting one, and the path long and tortuous. It is difficult to believe that this or any Congress now on the horizon will be willing to affirm Obama’s initiative. Neither is it likely, though perhaps less easy to predict, that Congress will risk the political consequences of rescinding it.
It is even more difficult to imagine a president in the foreseeable future unilaterally granting this population any more than Obama has, apart from perhaps extending the order’s three-year limit. Similarly, the odds are against any future chief executive—especially a Republican—terminating Obama’s program. So rather than direct these 5 million individuals down a path to citizenship, Obama has almost certainly consigned them to legal limbo.... KEEP READING
