OK, to close the proverbial loop on President Obama’s administrative “fix” of our “broken immigration system”, here’s a few other things that the President announced on November 20, 2014. For more details on all aspects of this Executive Action, please see my two previous blog posts.
Provisional Waivers. This was a biggie, and just about the day after the President’s announcement, I had someone walk into my office who will benefit under this provision (once implemented). The President has decided to expand an earlier program his administration put into place which provides for “provisional waivers” of the 3- and 10-year unlawful presence bars on the admission of aliens who have accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence in the United States. Currently, this program only assists the spouses, sons, or daughters of U.S. citizens. Under the President’s proposed expansion, it will now also benefit qualifying relatives of lawful permanent residents (i.e., Green Card holders).
Miscellaneous. The President also announced several other initiatives, not all of which can be neatly categorized I have done in earlier blogs. First, the President announced some personnel reforms involving immigration and customs officers. He also is trying to promote naturalization for eligible Green Card holders by, for example, directing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) to start accepting credit cards for paying naturalization fees, to consider partial waivers of naturalization fees in its next biennial fee study, and to launch a comprehensive media campaign to promote naturalization. He also is establishing an interagency task force on “New Americans” so as “increase meaningful engagement” between immigrants and the communities where they settle. Finally, the President is also establishing an interagency working group to address the interplay of immigration and employment law. I personally think it will be interesting to see what develops out of this last one.
As I have previously said, it seems clear to me that what President Obama announced was very necessary and very welcome, even if the manner in which it did it was controversial (along obviously with what he did). Last week, the House of Representatives passed a funding bill for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that defunded his initiatives. Although the measure passed, interestingly, 26 Republicans voted against Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s amendment which would have defunded the President’s original 2012 Deferred Action Against Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”) initiative. This bill is now on to the Senate, where I doubt it will pass, but it certainly create a forum for debate that may very well impact the 2016 presidential elections. Let’s see what happens.