“Effective immediately, young people who were brought to the US through no fault of their own as children and who meet certain criteria will be eligible to receive deferred action for a period of 2 years and that period will be subject to renewal.”
~Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano

President Obama has extended a policy that he had in place from last year that would bring a halt to the deportation of young “illegals” who are eligible for the Dream Act.  Republicans obstructed the ability to engage on immigration reform under President Bush who was very eager to move forward with comprehensive immigration legislation and they’re doing so under President Obama as well.  There is a constituency within the Democratic party that is also not in support of amnesty due to concerns by unions but to a lesser degree.

Mitt Romney has gone to great lengths to disparage the Latino community as has the Republican party for many, many years.  Republicans have passed law after law that targeted Latinos creating a 2nd class citizenship and treating these undocumented immigrants as the pariahs responsible for America’s woes.  And now – Republicans are going to have to engage on this issue … and Mitt Romney is going to have to take a stand as to whether or not he supports the Tea Party position i.e.  the conservative platform or whether or not he wants to avoid disenfranchising Latino voters.

You can find Mitt Romney’s greatest hits as to why Latinos do not like pachyderms HERE.

The Christian Science Monitor has the story HERE:

Under the executive order, individuals need to be at least sixteen years old and no older than thirty to be eligible for the deferred action policy. They need to have been brought to the United States before they turned sixteen and need to have resided in the country for at least five continuous years before their application. They also need to be currently in school, or to have graduated from high school or gotten a G.E.D., or have been honorably discharged from the military.

Individuals will be ineligible if they have been convicted of a felony offense, a significant misdemeanor, or multiple minor misdemeanors, or pose some other threat to national security.

Explaining the rationale for the executive order, Secretary Napolitano said that US immigration laws “are not designed to be blindly enforced without consideration given to the individual circumstances of each case. Nor are they designed to remove productive young people to countries where they may not have lived or even speak the language.”

The Washington Post says this is just an extension of policy from last year HERE:

Last June, Obama’s immigration chief, John Morton, issued a memo instructing federal immigration agents, lawyers and others to make the deportation of certain classes of immigrants — particularly those who had strong ties to the United States — a lower priority. The memo instructed officials to use new criteria to decide which deportation cases to pursue and which ones to lay aside for the time being.

Such “prosecutorial discretion” is exercised on a case-by-case basis. In other words, it isn’t a get-out-of-deportation-free card, but it effectively makes the deportation of certain immigrants less likely by deferring action.

ABC says the politics of this is going to be difficult for Romney HERE:

The Obama administration is likely to deny that politics played a role in the announcement, but the timing is ideal for the president’s reelection campaign. In the GOP primary, Mitt Romney adopted strictly conservative positions against illegal immigration in his effort to woo right-wing voters. He backs a strong fence along the border with Mexico, opposes most amnesty and boasts of his move as Massachusetts governor to deny in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.

Democrats have said they plan to hold Romney to those positions, painting him as a candidate with extreme views on immigration. Romney’s campaign stumbled last month when the Republican National Committee’s director of Hispanic outreach told reporters that Romney was “still deciding what his position on immigration is,” fueling the notion that he holds few true convictions.

The LA Times says celebrations are happening in Los Angeles HERE:

“At the beginning I sort of didn’t believe it,” he said, “but then almost immediately I was overwhelmed by a sense of joy. It gives me hope, it motivates me to continue fighting for my family, for my community.”

Ricardo Muniz, 24, was en route to the rally when he got the news.

“I can breathe,” he said.

The morning rally set to take place in front of the downtown federal building will now be part celebration as well as part advocation for Congress to give young illegal immigrants permanent relief, he said.

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