With the fate of 11 million immigrants in the hands of House Republicans, frustrated immigration advocates heckled Obama at a rally in San Francisco urging him to pass laws by means of an executive order.
In explain why he could not carry out such an action, Obama told one group, “If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so. But we’re also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition. And so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws.”
In other words, he tried to justify his inability to place an executive order as the nation’s laws prevent him from acting unilaterally while also mentioning that the administration had taken steps to suspend the deportation of immigrants brought into the country as children as well as those who were relatives of US service members.
Yet the figures show that a record 1.47 million people were deported in the first five years of Obama’s Presidency, and the heckling in San Francisco just showed how unhappy people were with the President not just because of this delay in immigration reform but of the administration’s policies in general.
House Republicans rejected the Senate’s detailed immigration bill in June that was passed by the latter and would pave the way for citizenship for millions of that came to United States via illegal immigration.
Yet despite this delay, advocates are also not happy with the President since it is during his two terms that record deportation has taken when most of these immigrants would qualify for citizenship under the Senate-passed bill.