Last Fri­day, Pres­i­dent Obama announced a new pol­icy that addresses many of the issues raised in the pro­posed DREAM Act. The Pres­i­dent seems to have decided that wait­ing ten years for Con­gress to act is long enough.

What the DREAM Act (Devel­op­ment, Relief, and Edu­ca­tion for Alien Minors) would do is to pro­vide per­ma­nent res­i­dency to young peo­ple who were brought to the United States ille­gally as chil­dren, and who are of “good moral char­ac­ter,” who have grad­u­ated from high school, and who sat­isfy a series of other con­di­tions. The Act was orig­i­nally pro­posed on August 1, 2001, by Sen­a­tors Dick Durbin (D-​​IL) and Orrin Hatch (R-​​UT), and has had bipar­ti­san sup­port ever since.

This seemed pretty much like a no-​​brainer, an easy first step toward com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform. Chil­dren who were brought to this coun­try before they were able to decide for them­selves where they wanted to be, and who since then have grown to young adult­hood while being model mem­bers of their com­mu­nity, should cer­tainly be granted the right to stay here. The DREAM Act did not grant cit­i­zen­ship, though it did encour­age pub­lic ser­vice or the abil­ity to con­tribute to the com­mu­nity, in the form of join­ing the mil­i­tary or attend­ing (and grad­u­at­ing from) college.

Still, after ten years, Con­gress did not pass a ver­sion of this law. The bill was last re-​​introduced in the Sen­ate, in May of 2011, by Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid (D-​​NV). Sev­eral Sen­a­tors who had pre­vi­ously sup­ported the bill — includ­ing John Cornyn (R-​​TX), Jon Kyl (R-​​AZ), John McCain (R-​​AZ), and Lind­sey Gra­ham (R-​​SC) — now chose to oppose it, say­ing that Amer­ica needed stronger enforce­ment of exist­ing immi­gra­tion laws first. This seems disin­gen­u­ous, since more ille­gal immi­grants have been deported in just the first three years of Pres­i­dent Obama’s term than in the full eight years of Pres­i­dent Bush’s. Nev­er­the­less, Repub­li­cans fil­i­bus­tered the bill, and it lan­guished once more.

Pres­i­dent Obama has sup­ported the DREAM Act. Being oblig­ated, as Pres­i­dent, to enforce exist­ing law, he is bound by the cur­rent fed­eral immi­gra­tion statutes. How­ever, being the head of the Exec­u­tive Branch, he has wide dis­cre­tion on how to do that. “Pros­e­cu­to­r­ial dis­cre­tion” exists for a num­ber of rea­sons, pri­mar­ily because law enforce­ment offi­cials at every level (local, munic­i­pal, state, fed­eral) have lim­ited resources, and sim­ply can­not put the full weight of their efforts behind every case. There isn’t enough time, money, or resources to go around. Pri­or­i­ties have to be set, and the most egre­gious cases need to be pur­sued first. It’s akin to choos­ing to assign police detec­tives to find a ser­ial mur­derer, rather than keep them on the streets tick­et­ing jaywalkers.

The new rules Pres­i­dent Obama announced last Fri­day are a tem­po­rary stop­gap mea­sure, designed to give some relief to many of the same peo­ple whom the DREAM Act was designed to help:

To qual­ify for pros­e­cu­to­r­ial dis­cre­tion pur­suant to the new pol­icy, ille­gal immi­grants must have entered before the age of 16, resided in the U.S. at least five years, are now attend­ing or grad­u­ated from high school or served hon­or­ably in the mil­i­tary, are now 30 or under, and have never been con­victed of a seri­ous crime. Hav­ing received pros­e­cu­to­r­ial dis­cre­tion, they can apply for work authorization.

This “work autho­riza­tion” lasts for a period of two years, after which time an indi­vid­ual would have to reap­ply. This pol­icy in no way grants “amnesty”, nor does it encour­age more peo­ple to come to our coun­try ille­gally. Nor does it alter anyone’s per­ma­nent sta­tus. Since this is a pros­e­cu­to­r­ial pol­icy, rather than a change in the law, it can be reversed at any time by the next Pres­i­dent — or even by this President.

It is cer­tainly within the pow­ers of the head of the Exec­u­tive Branch to set pri­or­i­ties regard­ing who the Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) ser­vice spends its lim­ited resources pros­e­cut­ing. The Pres­i­dent has decided that the peo­ple cov­ered under these new rules are a far lower pri­or­ity than, say, drug run­ners or arms mer­chants. That’s really the sum total of the President’s announcement.

Putting aside human­i­tar­ian, ratio­nal, and bipar­ti­san con­sid­er­a­tions, this change in pol­icy seems a smart polit­i­cal move. Despite his depor­ta­tion record, Pres­i­dent Obama holds a 34-​​point lead over Rom­ney among reg­is­tered Latino vot­ers, 61 to 27 per­cent. Even Repub­li­cans acknowl­edge this is some­thing of an over­whelm­ing lead. Many analy­sis say that Rom­ney would need to attract close to 40 per­cent of the His­panic vote to win the election.

Repub­li­cans seem unable to for­mu­late a response. If they oppose this change in pros­e­cu­to­r­ial pol­icy, then they come across as heart­less and anti-​​immigrant, par­tic­u­larly anti-​​Hispanic, though other immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties also rec­og­nize the value of immi­gra­tion reform. Some par­ti­sans have been reduced to claim­ing this move will make bipar­ti­san reform less likely (which seems con­fus­ing, since those same peo­ple killed the actual bipar­ti­san bill). There is an attempt to paint it as uncon­sti­tu­tional, which is clearly absurd. But if any­one comes out in favor of the change, that would make Pres­i­dent Obama seem to have done some­thing rea­son­able, which goes against the nar­ra­tive Repub­li­cans have been try­ing to mount since Jan­u­ary of 2009.

Repub­li­can obstruc­tion­ism has turned the Con­gress into noth­ing more than a place action goes to die. If it takes some uni­lat­eral dis­cre­tion to get any­thing done these days, then so be it. Per­haps we should have more of that.

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