NDN/SR Statement on Obama Immigration Decision, Deportations

Today’s decision to delay is a pragmatic recognition that given the election, and a very crowded Presidential agenda, the Administration will be more likely to successfully sell whatever action they take to the public after the election than before.  Am sure this was a tough decision but I think it is was the right one.

Immigration advocates should be careful to temper their reaction.  At the end of the day we are talking about a six week delay on an issue of enormous consequence.    It is more important that it get done right than fast.  

In discussing deportations, it is also important to consider how much the President has already done.   The 2011, DHS’s “Morton Memos” made it official government policy to end deportation of undocumented immigrants without criminal records.   Just a few years into this new policy, in 2013, we saw the results of this new strategy – all but 10,000 of the 370,000 deported either had a criminal record or were caught entering the country without permission; and the total number of people deported from the interior of the US had plummeted.   The practical effect of these changes is the threat of deportation has already been lifted for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.  The assertion by some that delay means tens of thousands more “innocent” immigrants will be deported are at best exaggerating the short term impact of today’s decision.     

For the data backing all this up see our recent report: http://www.ndn.org/blog/2014/07/timely-new-ndn-report-central-american-migrants-obama-borderimmigration-enforcement-rec

-          Simon Rosenberg, President, NDN/New Policy Institute

Update: I am quoted in stories today on the President's decision in MSNBC, Huffington Post, Fusion and The New Republic.