 |
| Obama to save Millions of Illegal immigrants from deportation and offer them working permits. |
Even as they grapple with an immigration crisis at the border, White House officials are making plans to act before November's mid-term elections to grant work permits to potentially millions
of immigrants who are in this country illegally, allowing them to stay in the United States without threat of deportation, according to advocates and lawmakers in touch with the administration.
Such a large-scale move on immigration could scramble election-year politics and lead some conservative Republicans to push for impeachment proceedings against President Barack Obama, a prospect White House officials have openly discussed.
Yet there's little sign that the urgent humanitarian situation in South Texas, where unaccompanied minors have been showing up by the tens of thousands from Central America, has impeded Obama from making plans to address some portion of the 11.5 million immigrants now in this country illegally.
Obama announced late last month that congressional efforts to remake the nation's dysfunctional immigration system were dead and he would proceed on his own authority to fix the system where he could.
 |
| Activist Ingrid Vaca of Arlington, Virginia, who is originally from Bolivia, participates in an United We Dream rally in front of the White House today. Immigration reform activists urged President Obama not to deport the parents of DREAMers, children who were brought illegally to the U.S. |
Advocates and lawmakers who were in separate meetings Friday said that administration officials are weighing a range of options including reforms to the deportation system and ways to grant relief from deportation to targeted populations in the country, likely by expanding Obama's two-year-old directive that granted work permits to certain immigrants brought here illegally as youths.
That program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, has been extended to more than 500,000 immigrants so far.
Advocates would like to see deferred action made available to anyone who would have been eligible for eventual citizenship under a comprehensive immigration bill the Senate passed last year, which would be around 9 million people.
But Obama told them in a meeting a month ago to 'right-size' expectations, even as he pledged to be aggressive in steps he does take.
That's led advocates to focus on other populations Obama might address, including parents or legal guardians of U.S. citizen children. They account for approximately 3.8 million of illegal immigrants living in the U.S, as of 2009, according to an analysis by Pew Research's Hispanic Trends Project.
Another population of interest is parents or legal guardians of DACA recipients - perhaps 500,000 to 1 million people, according to the Fair Immigration Reform Movement.
'Our parents deserve to live without the fear of deportation,' Maria Praeli, a 21-year-old from New Haven who came to the United States from Peru 16 years ago, said at a protest outside the White House on Monday.
'It is time for the president to go big and to go bold.'