Obama halts some immigration cases

[Tx4obama]

Source: Bostom.com

The Obama administration took one of its boldest steps yet toward addressing illegal immigration today by announcing it would halt potentially thousands of cases in federal immigration court if they do not involve criminals or people with flagrant immigration violations.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said today that the agency will launch a case-by-case review of 300,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the nation to focus on the federal government’s top priority, detaining and deporting criminals and serious violators of immigration law.

Immigrants classified as low-priority cases could receive a stay of deportation and the chance to apply for a work permit.

The move is likely to inflame political tensions nationwide as a campaign issue in 2012, and it has major implications in Massachusetts, which has the second-highest immigration court backlog in the United States. All manner of immigrants in the court pipeline could stand to benefit from the policy shift, from factory workers snatched in the 2007 New Bedford raid, to same-sex couples about to be separated, to youths facing deportation.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/08/immigration/xVwK5kIcuveuzkoAFlilFJ/index.html

[bhikkhu]

1. Looked at in another way, Obama has fully supported immigration laws

...with the result that we have had a very large increase in deportations and a big drop-off in illegal immigration, but also developed a very large backlog of cases waiting for review.

The action described is simply the prioritizing of those cases toward dealing with the worst first, rather than treating them all as equivalent, and potentially allowing work permits for low-priority cases while they wait for a hearing. It sounds like a fair way of doing things, in a program that has been going well (depending on ones view of the laws involved, of course).

[Philippine expat]

2. This will cost him votes

among moderate independents

[LatteLibertine]

3. IMO the problem isn't immigrants

It's businesses who want to create a permanent low wage labor class that never may become citizens and thus enjoy better pay with benefits. I suppose this is the alternative some businesses take when they can't really export some jobs, or do not desire to do so.