for immediate release // excuse cross-posting
Contact: B. Loewe, NDLON, 773.791.4668
Fact: President Has Authority and Responsibility to Act on Immigration
Inhumane Immigration Policy Requires Executive Reforms
Not Electoral Triangulation
In anticipation of political analysis of the impact of today’s elections on immigration policy, Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network issued the following statement:
Many people will try to spin today’s election results to have meaning either for or against executive action on immigration. The truth is that the two are unrelated no matter how hard lobbyists and partisans will try to connect them.
The fact is that the President has the moral responsibility and the full authority under existing law to expand relief and end the policies he himself has described as inhumane. Good policy should not be subject to bad politics.
The Obama administration’s pattern of subordinating immigration policy to either legislative or electoral considerations has had catastrophic results. But when he declared a review of deportation practices to make them ‘more humane,’ he signaled the opportunity to finally free the issue of immigration from the poisonous politics of Washington and focus on what’s right.
President Obama was elected on a promise to change the way politics work in Washington. Fulfilling that pledge can start with doing what is right on immigration: immediately expanding the relief he already provided immigrant youth and ending the programs that criminalize the very immigrants he’s said should be granted inclusion in this country.
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