Interest groups are split on the meaning of a leaked immigration policy memo Brendan Wilkerson/MNS
WASHINGTON — After a year of little to no movement on immigration, some groups say they fear the president is looking at other ways to skirt Congress and address the issue of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. through other channels.
At a joint press conference Monday, in a letter to President Barack Obama, 17 groups expressed concerns that the president would legalize millions of immigrants without the approval of Congress.
Their fear, the groups said, comes from sources within the Department of Homeland Security and particularly a memo that was leaked to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office, in which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials discuss the parameters of different immigrant status’, and whether steps like “deferred action” might allow fewer individuals to be put in deportation proceedings.
The memo’s purpose is described as offering “administrative relief options to promote family unity, foster economic growth, achieve significant process improvements and reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization.”
In the memo, which is addressed to the USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas, high-ranking USCIS officials discuss a sort of back-up plan for U.S. Citizenship and immigration Services, should no immigration reform be passed by Congress.
The press conference comes after eight senators also raised the issue with the president, lead by Republican Grassley, who obtained the memo.
“A lot of groups are looking at this because it looks to them like a pattern of abusive power,” said Roy Beck, president of Numbers USA, a group that advocates for reduce immigrant numbers for the reason of preserving American jobs.
“You have the administration grabbing more authority than they really deserve.”
“This is much bigger than just immigration,” he added.
He and representatives from other groups, which included the Tea Party WDC, Right March.com, Judicial Watch and ProEnglish, a group that argues for the official sanctioning of English as the language of government, asked the White House to step back from any of the actions mentioned in the memo, which they saw as a steps towards widespread amnesty.
ProEnglish, which does not have an official stance on immigration reform, took issue with the ideas in the memo because amnesty would confer legal status to immigrants without them having to conform to any English-language standards.
“The way it is set up now is that in order to become a citizen you have to learn English,” said Jayne Cannava, executive director of ProEnglish. “By granting blanket amnesty to the 11 million illegal immigrants they would bypass that test.”
The possible options discussed in the leaked memo are not amnesty, but rather agency attempts to deal with the impossibility of deporting mass numbers of people currently living within U.S. borders, according to Donald Kerwin, vice president for programs at the Migration Policy Institute.
“The immigration system is totally overwhelmed,” he said, adding that ICE can only deport around 400,000 people a year.
“So there have to be decisions made as to who is put into the court proceedings to be removed from the country.”
As for calling options like “deferred action” and “parole in place,” amnesty and accusing Obama of being lax in enforcement, Kerwin doesn’t follow that. According to him, the current administration has surpassed the previous one in both the number of deportations and fines of employers hiring illegal immigrants.
“Those don’t sound like amnesties to me,” he said. “Those sound like common-sense policies that are going to be the basis of individual determinations.
“How you call something like that a large-scale legalization, I’m not sure.”
In a press release responding to the leaked memo, USCIS Press Secretary Christopher Bentley said the agency would not comment on “notional, pre-decisional memos.”
“To be clear, DHS will not grant deferred action or humanitarian parole to the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population,” he said.