Half a victory

Right-wing Republicans are aghast at Obama taking presidential executive action to end a deportation threat to millions or nearly half of the undocumented immigrant population currently living in the United States. 

But Arturo Carmona, executive director of Presente.org, the online Latino advocacy organization, describes it as only "a partial solution." Seven million immigrants, he said, "were left out of today’s proposal all together, ensuring more deportations, separated families, and the continuation of detention for nearly 34,000 immigrants, including children, as a result of a profit-generating bed mandate for private prisons. On top of all of that, border and immigrant communities are being terrorized on the border every day, facing violence and outright murder. This militarization of our border must end."

Ryan Campbell, communications director for the DREAM Action Coalition, an advocacy and lobbying group also had reservations that Obama’s legislation “left out millions who will face more enforcement from those angered by Obama’s policy."

Cristina Jimenez, co-founder and managing director at United We Dream said  "But real talk? Today’s victory is historic but it is incomplete."

The plan does not include a path to citizenship or access to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. While the deferral program does apply to the parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, it does not include a way for the parents of Dreamers—people brought into the country as children—to gain legal status. It directs more resources to border security in what in what the ACLU described as "more boots on the throats of border residents", with an emphasis on deporting new arrivals. According to the Pew Research Center, deportations reached a historic high of nearly 440,000 in 2013, even though the president acknowledged Thursday illegal border crossing are currently the lowest since the 1970s.

Although the AFL-CIO, pointed out that the plan still leaves more than 6 million workers unprotected by explaining "… more than half of those who currently lack legal protections will remain vulnerable to wage theft, retaliation, and other forms of exploitation,"  but Richard Trumka, president of the labor alliance unfortunately marred its case with the nationalististic American jobs for American workers when he added in its statement “…we are concerned by the President’s concession to corporate demands for even greater access to temporary visas that will allow the continued suppression of wages in the tech sector.” 

In 2013, only 44,000 work visas for "skilled and unskilled" labor were issued, according to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data.

Over the last decade, the Republican-controlled state capital in Arizona - with voter support as well as support from out-of-state groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - created dozens of anti-immigration laws. At their heart was the principle of "attrition through enforcement", the idea of creating laws to make Arizona so inhospitable for undocumented immigrants that they would leave the state. Arizona made headlines in 2010 when Republican Governor Jan Brewer enacted a bill sponsored by Pearce, SB 1070, one of the toughest anti-immigrant laws in the country and led to the "show me your papers" portion of SB 1070 that made it mandatory for police to question someone about their legal status if the police have "reasonable suspicion" that person is in the country illegally helped deport two million people.

According to Ray Ybarra, a civil rights and criminal defence attorney, explains "We are seeing a reversal, the state of Arizona finally realises they've been spending too much money doing something that is outside their realm and against the constitution." The manner in which these and other laws were passed and enforced by local authorities in Latino neighbourhoods created a toxic climate of fear for immigrants but appear to have backfired.

In 2012, the US Supreme Court struck down three provisions of SB 1070, including the one that made it a crime to be illegally present in the state. In the past weeks, federal courts overturned two state laws that Arizona authorities used to target undocumented immigrants. One made it a state crime to knowingly transport unauthorised immigrants and another denied bail to all undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes so they would have to stay in jail until their trial dates.  A third law that makes using a false identification for work a crime currently is being challenged in federal court. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who rose to national fame for his iron-fisted approach in dealing with undocumented immigrants, had to limit his crackdown on immigration after a federal judge ruled his officers violated civil rights of Latinos during his immigration sweeps. Now his agency is under the close watch of a court imposed monitor who supervises the way it conducts enforcement to ensure his officers don't discriminate. Republican Senator Russell Pearce, the mastermind behind many of the laws, role in the immigration crackdown partially led to his being voted out of office in a special recall election in 2011, which had the support of conservative Republicans concerned by the negative economic impact the laws had on their communities.