President Obama’s immigration plan will shield five million illegal immigrants and shift the focus to felons, gang members and suspected terrorists.

Obama will reject claims he is offering a free pass to undocumented immigrants and argue that “the real amnesty” would be leaving a broken system as it is now, according to excerpts of his remarks released by the White House.

“Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I’m describing is accountability — a commonsense, middle ground approach,” Obama will say.

“If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up.”

Obama will lay out changes he is making to immigration laws without the consent of Congress. A key element of his plan is to instruct immigration authorities to prioritize expulsion action against gang members, felons and suspected terrorists rather than law abiding undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and residents and others, senior administration officials said. Source: CNN

Never mind the fact that former president Ronald Reagan (1986) oversaw nearly three million illegal immigrants amnesty. President George H. W. Bush expanded on Reagan’s plan a few years later. But never mind the fact that the Republicans did it. This may all backfire on the Republicans as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and two others are threatening to sue. Um, they are barking up the wrong tree. A court action against Obama is likely to fail.

Republican leaders who had hoped to focus on corporate tax reform, fast-track trade pacts, repealing the president’s healthcare law and loosening environmental restrictions on coal are instead being dragged into an immigration skirmish that they’ve tried studiously to avoid for most of the last year.

That’s largely because the question of how to handle the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S. bitterly divides Republicans, and the party has been unable to agree on an alternative to the president’s plan.

To many, stark warnings from Boehner and McConnell sound more like pleas to the president to avoid reenergizing the GOP’s conservative wing, whose leaders are already threatening to link the president’s immigration plan to upcoming budget talks. Source: LA Times

As with the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans want to repeal the law, but have no plan to offer. The same holds true on immigration reform. They want to chide the president, even dropping the I-word (impeachment) but have no plan of their own. It’s about to get really ugly in Washington D.C. and my bet is that the Republicans will end up with a black eye and President Obama will prevail. The fact is, the current Democratic Party don’t deserve the votes of blacks and Hispanics, but the Republicans certainly don’t either.

This was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.