Why Few Of Those 4.5 Million Immigrants Will Get Amnesty

OK. President Obama has proclaimed that 4.5 million illegal immigrants will get amnesty.

So, what now?

Well, probably very little will happen before a new President is elected in 2016 with the potential of nullifying Obama's action with his/her own executive order.  This is because our immigrant processing  is already behind by at least 2 years.

In fact, back in July, 40,000 immigrants filed a federal lawsuit because they had been waiting for up to 2 years simply to get interviewed so that the processing of their asylum requests could even begin. If our immigration service doesn't have enough staff to start processing 40,000 requests, how can they handle 100 times that amount and, fulfill the daunting task of verifying their dates of entry along with verifying that their children are U.S. born?  In addition, this must be done with people who, in most cases, speak little or no English.  A fact that only slows things down even further because an interpreter or bilingual agent will be needed to facilitate the process.

Essentially, Obama's amnesty proclamation is in name only and impractical to implement without any substantial increases in both budget and staffing.

But, the President doesn't really care that these people won't get processed.

All that he cares about is the pro-Hispanic and pro-Latino politics of his action.  Politics which are intended to enhance the Democrats standing among this minority group, and the politics of trying to show Republicans as obstructionists because of any attempts they may make to reverse the order.  It is also quite possible that the timing of this has to do with the fact that January is likely to kickoff two years of announced campaigning for the presidency, and President Obama is most likely hoping that the Republican candidates will all denounce his amnesty order and therefore, inflame Latinos against them and any others in their party.  However, this action may have done the opposite. A recent poll shows that 37% of Latinos, and nearly half of all Americans disapprove of his order on immigration.


Reference:

Asylum-seeking immigrants file class-action suit against federal government over interview backlog: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/asylum-seeking-immigrants-sue-feds-backlog-article-1.1854548

A new NBC poll shows Latinos do not overwhelmingly support President Obama's decision to thwart Congress on amnesty through executive action: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/11/19/poll-not-all-latinos-approve-of-obamas-executive-amnesty-n1921128