Washington (AFP) – President Barack Obama will lay out his plan to reform the United States’ “broken” immigration system on Thursday, he said, accusing Washington of allowing the problem to fester.
Obama said he would follow up a televised address on Thursday with a visit the next day to a Las Vegas high school to promote his move to by-pass Congress and impose change through executive order.
“Everyone agrees that our immigration system is broken, unfortunately Washington has allowed the problem to fester for too long,” he said in a video message on the White House Facebook page.
“So what I’m going to be laying out is the things that I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system work better, even as I continue to work with Congress and encourage them to get a bipartisan comprehensive bill that can solve the entire problem.”
In the U.S. midterm elections earlier this month, Obama’s Republican opponents secured control of both houses of Congress, further hurting any remaining hope he had of negotiating broad immigration reform.
But Obama has made it clear he intends to invoke the power of his office to impose new measures to protect from expulsion some of the 11 million undocumented migrants living in the United States.
Republican leaders have said they fiercely oppose any recourse by Obama to executive authority to force the issue and warned that this would make legislative reform harder.
AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski
