President Barack Obama talked more Friday about his executive action to free millions of undocumented migrants from the fear of deportation.
The Migration Policy Institute has reported the president’s action will affect some 5.2 million people in the United States, about 67,000 of those in Nevada.
On “KNPR’s State of Nevada” Friday morning, Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, a Las Vegas Democrat and immigration attorney, praised the move.
“This is something we have been working on, advocates and policy makers, for years,” she said.
The president’s hand, said Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, was forced by inaction in Congress on immigration reform.
“The Senate passed comprehensive reform in the summer of 2013,” Earnest told “KNPR’s State of Nevada.” “House Republicans have been blocking it for more than 500 days … because they know if it came up for a vote it would pass.”
But Dr. Annette Teijeiro, a Republican who ran but lost a Congressional race against Democrat Dina Titus earlier this month, echoed Congressional Republican sentiments by saying she believes the president overstepped his bounds.
Teijeiro’s father immigrated to the safety of the United States when Fidel Castro took control of Cuba.
Asked if she sympathizes with undocumented workers in the United States today, she replied: “I’m sympathetic to the idea that human trafficking, sex trafficking and drug trafficking all come together, and we need to address this issue for certain.”
Political analyst Jon Ralston, who hosts “Ralston Report” on KSNV-TV Channel 3, said all the talk of congeniality shortly after the elections two weeks ago seems to have dissipated quickly.
“This is just going to stoke the partisan fires (in Congress) that everyone said was going to abate,” he said. “It’s going to be very, very nasty.”
He expects Republicans at the federal level to sue the president and to attempt passage of their own immigration legislation.
As for the president’s right to change certain rules – he did not change laws – to bring about immigration reform, Ralston asked if Republicans were so concerned, why didn’t they do something themselves right after the election?
“You have to ask yourself,” he said. “If they were really committed to doing something, why didn’t (Congressional leaders) call a press conference and say what they were going to do?”
He also saw the president’s move as a good way to begin drawing Hispanic voters back to the polls.
Democrats lost numerous seats in federal and state elections in large part, analysts say, because so few Democrats voted. “If they can continue to do that, I think you might see some very different (election) results in 2016,” he added.
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