President Obama was in North Carolina on Tuesday, where he delivered remarks at the American Legion’s national convention.
North Carolina U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, an incumbent Democrat fighting for reelection against Republican challenger Thom Tillis, wasn’t exactly excited about the president’s visit, according to WXII/TV News in Winston-Salem.
That was partly because Mr. Obama is unpopular in the Tar Heel State. It also was partly because Sen. Hagan is trying to distance herself from the president not only on veterans’ issues (in fact, she publicly criticized him Friday on the issue), but also, importantly, on immigration.
Indeed, now that Mr. Obama has returned to Washington after his two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, there is anticipation in the nation’s capitol that he will announce yet another executive action, this one conferring temporary legal status on certain undocumented immigrants.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., predicted as much Friday when he said the president will take unilateral action on several fronts that would apply to as many as 5 million individuals who arrived in the United States by unlawful means.
Some will benefit from expansion of the Obama administration’s two-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was created on the president’s order and which has enrolled some 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to this country before their 16th birthday.
The Obama administration also plans to ease restrictions on businesses that hire illegal immigrants, Rep. Gutierrez suggested, particularly agribusinesses that rely on undocumented workers.
“I think the president’s going to take action on all those levels,” said Rep. Gutierrez, who’s from Mr. Obama’s home state. The president’s “going to take broad, expansive action,” the lawmaker said.
Sen. Hagan, locked in a close race against Mr. Tillis, speaker of North Carolina’s House of Representatives, is not nearly as sanguine as Rep. Gutierrez about the prospect that Mr. Obama will once again take unilateral action on immigration.
Especially with a Rasmussen poll released this month in which 60 percent of voters in the Tar Heel State said the primary focus of any new immigration bill passed by Congress should be to send back home as quickly as possible recently arrived undocumented immigrants.
While Sen. Hagan voted for Senate immigration reform legislation last year and laments that House Republicans have not similarly passed an immigration reform bill, she does not think that President Obama should bypass Congress.
“I think this (immigration reform) is a congressional issue,” she said in July, adding, unequivocally, “I do support congressional action over executive action.”
We share Sen. Hagan’s sentiments. The power to rewrite, amend or nullify provisions of the nation’s extant immigration law properly resides with the federal government’s legislative – rather than executive – branch.
We understand Mr. Obama’s frustration that he has been unable to bend House Republicans to his will on immigration reform. Nevertheless, that does not give the president license to create an immigration policy of his own.
