Obama’s plan to shield illegal immigrants law changing

 “By summer’s end,” The Washington Post reported last month, President Obama may “announce new measures that would potentially allow millions of illegal immigrants to remain ... without fear of deportation.” Under consideration: Legal residence and work permits for those “closely related to U.S. citizens or those who have lived in the country a certain number of years – a population that ... could reach as high as 5 million.”

Alarmed? There’s still time for Oregonians and citizens across the nation to dissuade the president from this action.

As with his 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – which lifted the threat of immediate deportation from more than half a million illegal immigrants under the age of 31 – Obama’s new measures would turn upon an expansive interpretation of “prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion enables law enforcement officials to throw the book at serious criminals but apply leniency toward lesser scofflaws.

Obama’s new measures, he has contended, would shift enforcement from reputedly “law-abiding” illegal immigrants to (as per The New York Times) “felons, violent criminals, public-safety and national-security threats.”

Historically, however, prosecutorial discretion has been applied to individual lawbreakers on a case-by-case basis, not used to exempt broad categories of them from punitive action. Indeed, notes Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle, “At the point at which you are announcing that the law won’t be enforced against a large fraction of the people who are violating it, you are effectively rewriting that law.”

And if Obama shields 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation (a group more numerous than the population of Oregon), he will not just rewrite law, but compromise the very purpose of our immigration system. For that purpose is not merely to deport the worst of the worst. It is to assure a rational, orderly process by which foreigners are admitted to our nation and to determine the conditions and duration of their residence. It is to deter illegal entry. And it is to remove those who come or stay illegally.

Though not all illegal immigrants are violent, all of them harm the integrity of that system and the Americans it was created to serve. Illegal immigrants take jobs from and depress the wages of U.S. citizens – especially youths, minorities and unskilled workers. “The average illegal alien,” writes Jon Feere, legal policy analyst of the Center for Immigration Studies, “violates numerous statutes” beyond those pertaining to immigration, notably, “laws related to employment such as perjury and identity theft.” And illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children burden tax-paid social services (including, to the tune of more than $1 billion, those administered by Oregon’s state and local governments, according to a recent estimate of the Federation for American Immigration Reform).

The interests of Americans – not illegal immigrants – should drive our nation’s immigration regime. This week, Oregonians should contact the White House and tell President Obama to scuttle his plan to reward immigration lawbreakers.

Jim Ludwick of McMinnville is a founder of Oregonians for Immigration Reform and served as president for 10 years. He can be reached at ofir@oregonir.org.

To contact President Obama, go to whitehouse.gov or call (202) 456-1111.