A political war is brewing in Washington over President Obama's intended unilateral action on immigration now that Republicans have taken control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in eight years.
House and Senate Republicans - and the public - have made it clear they have no intentions of accepting the president's immigration plans, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants, according to The Washington Times. That was, perhaps, most apparent in Oregon, where voters, to the dismay of Hispanic leaders, rejected a referendum that would have allowed illegal immigrants to carry driver's licenses.
"Republicans campaigned for the House and Senate against the Obama-Senate immigration bill and on the pledge to block President Obama's unlawful executive amnesty," Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, from Alabama, told The Washington Times. "The immediate emergency facing our new majority will be fighting the president's disastrous planned actions, and we will have not only a constitutional mandate but also a popular mandate to do so."
Many Republicans, who were outspoken against legalization, which Obama intended to enact this summer, replaced Democrats who were pro-legalization, namely in Arkansas, North Carolina and Colorado.
The Obama administration pushed plans for the unilateral action to after the elections, possibly to avoid giving voters the chance to express disagreement with the policy. But experts say that by putting off unilateral action, the president might have missed his opportunity to gain support from Hispanic voters for Democrats running in North Carolina and Colorado, the newspaper reported.
As Republicans celebrate the Tuesday political victory, Democrats and activists urged Obama to continue fighting "inhumane" policies against undocumented immigrants.
"The fact is that the president has a moral responsibility and the full authority under existing law to expand relief and end the policies he himself has described as inhumane. Good policy should not be subject to bad politics," Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, told the newspaper.
