Reports that President Barack Obama plans to push ahead with a plan to shield about 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation and let them stay and work in the United States have prompted the Republicans to issue dire warnings of retaliation.
The plan, leaked by senior Obama administration officials to select media outlets along with hints that the President could act on it as early as next week, set the cat among the pigeons on Capitol Hill, with Republican Speaker John Boehner warning his party will fight the plan “tooth and nail”.
The conservative core of the Republican Party has begun making the pitch for shutting down the Government indefinitely, but Obama’s own Democratic Party, which recently lost the elections, is egging him on to ignore the warnings and press ahead with his promised executive action.
The United States has more than 11 million illegal immigrants, including some 250,000 Indians. Immigration reform to address this issue has proved to be a non-starter in the US Congress over the years because of the Republican-Democratic divide, but Obama is committed to a landmark overhaul, beginning with executive action dealing with some key components.
For starters, Obama is said to favour protecting up to 5 million unauthorised immigrants from the threat of deportation and providing many of them with work permits. This move will benefit those immigrants who have been living illegally in the US for more than five years and have children who are US citizens or legal permanent residents.
Of interest to Indians will be the long-awaited plan to expand technology visas in a big way – something that high-profile American tech firms have been demanding for years.