Report: Obama Won't Enact Executive Amnesty Before Midterms

President Barack Obama will reportedly delay his executive amnesty until after the midterm elections even though he declared that he would change as many of the country’s immigration laws that he could “by the end of summer.”

Senate Democrats, fearing that executive amnesty will cost them control of the Senate, have been pressuring Obama to not act before the midterm elections. And White House officials told the New York Times on Saturday that Obama has decided to delay his executive amnesty, saying Obama “believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections.” But White House officials told the outlet that Obama “will take action on immigration before the end of the year.”

White House aides, according to the Times, started “calling elected officials and immigration advocates Saturday morning to inform them that the president had decided not to act before the election,” and Obama is “expected to talk about the issue during an interview with NBC’s ‘Meet the Press,'” which will be conducted on Saturday and broadcast on Sunday.  

The White House indicated that Obama was set on granting temporary amnesty and work permits to nearly five million illegal immigrants, and, according to the Times, Obama is reportedly “more determined than ever” to grant executive amnesty. But Obama’s team reportedly concluded  “that an immigration announcement before November” could “cripple Democratic efforts to retain control of the Senate.” 

Speaking at the NATO Summit in Wales on Friday, Obama said he received recommendations on potential executive actions from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder and would act “fairly soon” after reviewing them. For pro-amnesty advocates who have demanded that Obama grant executive amnesty “now,” it won’t be soon enough. On Friday, La Raza CEO and President Janet Murguia said on MSNBC that her community was “done waiting” for Obama to act and demanded that Obama give temporary amnesty to up to eight million illegal immigrants.

Critics of Obama’s executive amnesty, like Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), have been hammering Obama’s lawlessness and disregard for American workers. On Friday, Sessions said that the “only thing that is more shocking than Senate Democrats’ support for the President’s planned executive amnesty is the cravenness of asking him to proceed beginning the day after the midterms.”

“Once again, powerful politicians are colluding with powerful interest groups to deny you, the American citizen, the protection of your laws and your voice in government,” he said. “They don’t care what you want, or what you think–they scorn and mock our good and decent citizens for wishing their laws to be enforced. Never in recent memory has the divide between the everyday citizen, and the political elite, been as wide as it is now.”

Simply put, Sessions, who has been fiercest defender of the interests of American workers of all backgrounds during the amnesty debate, said the “immigration debate comes down to several central questions”:

• Does our country have the right to control its borders and decide who comes to live and work here
• Do citizens have the right to expect and demand that the laws passed by their elected representatives be enforced?
• Should American workers get priority for jobs and wages?

U.S Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow has also urged Obama to not enact an executive amnesty that would have a disparate impact on black workers. On Friday, the latest jobs report showed that a record number of Americans were out of the workforce and the black unemployment rate was 11.4%.