President’s Comments Must Be Followed by Immediate Action
“The President’s statements show a new recognition of the moral and legal truth about his unjust and unnecessary deportation policy. President Obama has now admitted mistake. The next step obviously is to fix it by ending programs like “Se Communities” that criminalize immigrants and by expanding relief to the fullest extent possible under current law.
It’s been widely known that his administration’s enforcement-first gamble was a disaster both for the nation’s politics and for immigrant families. Now he is in a position to fix it.
Executive action should not wait for uncertain outcomes in Congress. Instead it should at the very least uphold the bipartisan agreement that was reached by extending relief to all those who would have qualified for the Senate bill.
It is the President’s responsibility to make his policy ‘more humane’ as he said in the Spring. By acting now, the President can jumpstart the path to inclusion and empower the best advocates on immigration, undocumented people themselves, to fully participate in the process.”
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