Will Obama sail or sink with his immigration policy?
THE result of the recent midterm election of the US Congress was a great debacle for President Barack Obama. Some analysts predicted that having lost control over the Congress, President Obama would be a lame-duck president for the remaining two years in office. One of the reasons of his unpopularity was his indecisiveness in several US policy issues.
President Obama recently issued a presidential order on the US immigration to give parents of children who are US citizens or legal permanent residents the opportunity to undergo a background check and pay a fee to stay in the country temporarily for up to three years. They aren't offered any right to citizenship and the order could be reversed by another president. About four million people will be eligible for a new legal status that would allow them to work legally. An additional one million people now living illegally will have protection from deportation.
By issuing this order, President Obama demonstrated that he is capable of taking hard decisions even without the support of the Congress, which ignored the immigration issue for decades without passing any bill. He thus refused to be a lame-duck. As a matter of fact, he intends to rebound keeping in mind the elections of 2016 even though he won't contest.
Obama's action was welcomed by not only five million illegal immigrants, but by several ethnic groups who are legal US citizens or residents. It is estimated that 10% of the voters in the 2014 midterm election were Latinos. This figure was 9% in 2008 and 8% in 2004 and is likely to increase in the future. 70% of the Latinos and Asian Americans voted for Obama in the last presidential election. The African Americans including mixed races, who normally support the Democrats, represent 13.6% of the US population though all the eligible voters among them are not registered voters and their turnout at polls is low. Nevertheless, they represent a significant number of voters. By the new US policy on immigration, Obama intends to hold the ethnic vote banks for his party.
The Republicans accused Obama of violating the constitution in issuing the presidential order. Will they now pass a bill to declare the order null and void and thus lose the Latino, African American and Asian American voters? This is most unlikely. Obama has thus taken a calculated risk. No bill passed by the Congress is likely to withdraw the privileges granted by him. This will only vindicate his action. In all probability, he is, therefore, likely to sail and not sink with his immigration policy.
The writer is a former chief engineer of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission.
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