Immigration Reform

One of the biggest issues facing America today is the question of immigration reform. Every year, roughly one million immigrants are granted lawful permanent residence in the United States. However, at any given time, there are over 11 million immigrants living and often working illegally in the United States. Our government attempts to deport as many as they can, but more immigrants enter the country faster than we can catch and deport the others. Our immigration system is broken and in desperate need of reform, but our lawmakers have consistently refused to address this issue in any substantive way. President Obama is now threatening to take executive action to address what he sees as the flaws in the system, while Republicans in Congress declare that any interference from the President will put an end to any attempt at permanent reform.

As usual, the Republicans and Democrats are dragging out this circus and refusing to accomplish anything. Members of both parties are more concerned with posturing for their bases and looking tough on the evening news than they are with solving this crisis that our nation is facing. Meanwhile, millions of illegal immigrants are draining our resources, and more are coming into the United States every single day. At the same time, this is not simply a matter of dealing with criminals. Many of the illegal immigrants in America today are children or young adults who were brought here by their parents. Many of these children have spent nearly their entire lives in America, and have broken the law through no fault of their own. We need a solution that will also be sympathetic to their needs.

In 2012, President Obama issued an executive order called “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” the goal of which was to help protect young people who were brought to this country as children. This executive order shields these people from deportation and provides them with permits to work. The new action that he is threatening to take is expected to be something along the same lines, dismantling the apparatus that government agencies use to track and deport illegal immigrants. Republicans in Congress are vowing to strike back if Obama follows through with his plan.

However, Obama claims that he is being forced to act because the House Republicans have blocked any forward movement on immigration reform. The Senate passed a bipartisan, comprehensive Immigration Reform bill in 2013, and for over a year the House Majority Leader John Boehner has refused to allow the House of Representatives to vote on it. Obama says that he wants to make sure that our immigration system is fixed before he leaves office, so he has no choice but to go around Congress with an executive order. However, the Republicans are insisting that if the President goes through with his plan, they will do everything they can to sabotage it and that it will kill any chance of passing any meaningful immigration reform.

Both the Republicans in Congress and the President have clearly demonstrated that nobody in our government cares about actually solving this problem. Both sides are more interested in posturing and making their opponents look bad than in helping Americans who are being hurt by our current immigration policy. This is just another sign of our two party Demo-Republican system failing America. We need leaders who care about getting results. We need leaders who see a problem and then work to fix it, rather than scheming to make the problem look like someone else’s fault. If you agree, I urge you to please cast your write-in vote for me, Art Drew, in the 2016 Presidential election.