Mediaboss Marketing

Apr 15, 2014 4:02pm

President Obama has no plans to enact unilateral immigration overhaul by executive action, faith leaders from across the country said Obama told them today.

We did not discuss the need; we did not bring up the issue of the president doing unilateral action, Luis Cortes, president of Esperanza, a nonprofit law office serving immigrants, said at a news briefing after the Washington meeting.

We felt it was more important that Congress take action at this time.

Obama had asked the director of Homeland Security to look at ways to reduce the number of people deported for entering the United States without documentation. But White House press secretary Jay Carney says that is different from implementing immigration overhaul on his own.

The Department of Homeland Security is now performing a review of practices and implantation of enforcement guidelines. In other words, the administration is trying to obey the law and still rid the president of a title recently given him by Hispanic leaders, Deporter in Chief.

As for his changing immigration law, Carney said that is a nonstarter.

I think the president believes that there is an opportunity that still exists for House Republicans to follow the lead of the Senate, including Republicans in the Senate, and take up and pass comprehensive immigration reform, Carney said at todays press briefing. And todays meeting that the president had with faith leaders demonstrates and reinforces the fact that there is a broad, unusually broad, coalition that supports that effort, that supports comprehensive immigration reform and all the benefits that making reform the law would provide to the country, to our security, to our economy, to our businesses.

I think it highlights the isolation that House Republicans find themselves in when so many, not just politicians or advocacy leaders, but folks across the country support doing the right thing here and the irony, of course, is that there is a really strong conservative argument to be made on behalf of comprehensive immigration reform, he said.

In a series of meetings in the past few months, Obama has met with immigration reform activists and leaders on the topic, hoping to gain their support to pressure House republicans into action.

View original post here:
No Executive Action on Immigration Overhaul for Now