Once again, President Obama is in the news for attempting to keep one of his campaign promises.
This time, Obama is under fire for using executive orders to push forward immigration reform, a process which has many Republicans yelling cries of “tyranny” and “dictator” from the rooftops.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, from Brownsville, Texas, ruled last Monday that Obama exceeded his legal authority when he issued an executive order to defer deportations for ?immigrants.
We on the Editorial Board believe strongly that our nation’s ?immigration system is broken.
It is a system that has fragmented, figuratively impaling the dreams and hopes of millions of immigrants with the splinters of a series of cracked, ?imploded policies.
It is a system that has torn apart families, forced millions of immigrants to live in secrets and caused the deaths of countless others.
It is inhumane, it is unintellectual and it does not work.
Thus, it’s no surprise that Obama wants to push forward immigration reform to try and better the system as it currently stands.
As any successful leader should, Obama is not settling for the status quo of immigration policy as it stands, which is to more or less capture immigrants and escort them out of our country.
Putting aside the irony of Americans, those of a land created entirely by illegal immigrants, being opposed to allowing immigrants to stay in our nation, it’s amazing that both Democrats and Republicans say again and again that our immigration system is broken.
And yet we, as a nation, have delayed immigration reform extensively enough that it’s become necessary for the president to invoke his power of ?executive orders.
This is not a question of democracy being side-stepped or overthrown.
This is not a breakage of the chains that bind our three branches of government to one another to protect the people. This is an example of a president desperate to keep his nation moving forward to avoid stagnation and, as a result, decay.
The Obama Administration has begun seeking an emergency court order to move the executive order on immigration forward, despite Judge Hanen’s ruling.
If the court order is accepted, Hanen’s ruling will have no effect on Obama’s immigration orders.
If Speaker of the House John Boehner or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are serious about passing immigration reform legislatively, they ought to work with Congressional Democrats to pass a reasonable piece of legislation rather than continuing to stonewall the President at every turn.
As a result of their continued stalling, our immigration system has only continued to splinter and collapse in upon itself, suffocating millions of ?immigrants in the process.
And we as a people must stand up and demand more than that from our government.
We deserve a government that works together to get policies passed to better our nation. We must demand that Congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans work together to pass comprehensive ?immigration reform.
Barring that, we deserve a president who will stand up and take action when no one else will. And that’s what we got when we elected President Obama.
And if you don’t like that, pass a law.
