Legal, political questions surround Obama’s delayed immigration action

Aljazeera 

The latest chapter of this year’s long and winding immigration saga has Barack Obama’s administration delaying taking unilateral action to remove the threat of deportation for millions of undocumented immigrants, after vowing to do just that by the end of the summer.

After it became clear that a legislative solution was almost certainly dead in the 113th Congress, administration officials were said to be preparing wide-ranging changes to the way immigration laws were enforced. Although the White House has discussed few details in public, advocates were hoping for temporary legal relief and work permits for law-abiding undocumented migrants who had established roots in the United States — a population that could number in the millions.

However, under pressure from vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year and with control of the Senate at stake, the administration is now considering delaying an announcement of any changes until after the midterms, if it undertakes action on immigration at all.

But that may come as no surprise, given the legal and political matters involved in the perennially explosive issue of what to do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

Legal scholars have debated for months whether the president would be overstepping his authority in granting such a broad reprieve, with conservative lawmakers admonishing the administration for not enforcing the nation’s laws and saying that further executive action amounts to a power grab.