Obama Immigration Laws Essay

President Barack Obama recently announced his plans to reform immigration policies and laws by issuing an executive order. While emotions are mixed over what this means for the future, others are concerned that the president is abusing his power by not having the consent of the congressional court on his plan of action moving forward. Policy and law making in the United States is very faceted in terms of how the President can create or change laws, and who or what it takes to change these laws or cease their power. All laws start out as ideas, must be constitutional, and must be approved. Laws fall out of power when they are unconstitutional, powers change hands, or a group files suit against a law and the Supreme Court can rule to disband

An executive order is a legal proceeding that can only be enacted by the president. It has all the same powers as a law, but it lacks the permanence of a bill that was signed into a law. An executive order can bypass the legislative branch as long as it is constitutional and legal in terms of current laws. Therefore the immigration policies President Obama is planning to enact is covered as a greenlight under executive order. The current Immigration and Naturalization Act is written is such a way that it allows the president to enact these new policies, just as presidents past have, including President Reagan and President G.H. Bush. The current statute requires the Attorney General to act against those who qualify for deportation, not the President. Also there is nothing in his proposal of extending the ability for a set of illegal immigrants to gain the ability to legally stay in the country for 3 years at a time that is illegal or explicitly goes against anything already written into law, therefore it seems that the president has the right to enact this order using his executive power. (Wittes,