Republicans around the country were livid when President Barack Obama announced a plan to greatly reduce the likelihood of deportation for about 4.4 million undocumented immigrants late last month.
Congressional Republicans have ideas to counter Obama’s plan: Filing lawsuits, shutting down the government (again) and defunding immigration agencies have all been discussed.
However, in recent days, the GOP has coalesced around a “symbolic measure of disapproval” proposed by Gainesville’s own Rep. Ted Yoho. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Yoho’s proposal “effectively says Obama does not have authority to give protected status to millions of illegal immigrants.”
“Allowing amnesty to illegal immigrants is an insult to the millions of Americans who stood in line and came to this country legally,” he wrote in a letter to his constituents this summer.
Yoho must not have been paying much attention during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Both Republican presidents enacted executive orders providing deportation relief that closely resembled Obama’s plan, albeit on a smaller scale. More importantly, Yoho’s “symbolic” bill represents yet another attempt by Republicans to avoid taking any substantive action on immigration.
House Republicans have had four years to pass an immigration reform bill. Instead, they have spent those four years failing to enact any meaningful legislation, choosing instead to criticize the president for “poisoning the well” with his executive actions. It is certainly true that Obama’s executive action was not the most ideal way to address immigration issues in America. Although most Americans approve of Obama’s immigration policy — a CNN poll found that 50 percent of Americans said that Obama’s proposal was “about right” — 56 percent opposed Obama taking such action unilaterally.
Ideally, the president and Congress would work together to address the issue of immigration reform in a constructive and responsible manner. However, the president has faced a Congress unwilling to cooperate with him on this issue or any other. Republicans would rather motivate their political base by accusing the president of lawlessness and passing meaningless, symbolic bills than actually make progress on immigration reform.
Faced with this unprecedented level of obstruction from Congress, Obama had no choice but to act on his own. Hopefully, when Republicans take full control of Congress in January, they will shift course from their current obstructionism to a more constructive and responsible path. Even if they fail to appreciate the importance of immigration reform for America’s future, perhaps the GOP will acknowledge the need for support from Hispanic voters to ensure its long-term political survival.
However, it is more likely that Republicans will continue to oppose the president at every turn for the sake of short-term political gain. If that comes to pass, the president should continue to take appropriate, lawful actions on the issue of immigration just as he did last week.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 12/4/2014]
