With the current events as they are in the World today, President Obama has a lot on his plate in dealing with Russia, ISIS, North Korea, and various civil rights issues in the United States. In addition to all this, his deliberation on what to do regarding immigration reform weighs on him. Obama has already made it known that he intends on taking matters into his own hands when it comes to immigration reform due to the failure of Congress to even put immigration reform to a vote. He is clearly frustrated about this. President Obama said that he would take executive action in September but now has reconsidered and may wait until after the November elections. The other big issue is that Republicans are poised to file a lawsult claiming that President Obama will be breaking the law if he uses executive action to re-write immigraiton law.
A group of university law professors from 32 states, the District of Colombia and Puerto Rico authored a letter to President Obama stating that he does, in fact, have legal authority to make changes to current immigration law. Stephen Legomsky, former USCIS Chief Counsel and law school professor was part of the team that helped with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). He says that the team made sure the DACA program satisfied every legal requirement. The professors say in their letter that the administration has the legal authority to use prosecutorial discretion to prevent certain groups of people from being faced with deportation.
This is the second letter from this group of professors, the first outlining the case for DACA. This letter advises that the administration has the authority to use prosecutorial discretion modeled on the DACA initiative.
