Today, the decision (or indecision) of 8 justices has changed the fate of thousands of immigrants in the United States. Since the decision was split 4-4, the previous ruling against the Obama administration’s immigration plan was withheld. The plan was simple: certain undocumented immigrants would be given the opportunity to live in the U.S. for 3 years and acquire legal work here. The argument of the 25 states who called for the halt on Obama’s plan was that if these immigrants were allowed to stay in the U.S. for the 3 years they were promised, states would have to pay to support them. What they should have been thinking, however, is how the immigrants would support the states for those 3 years.
We’ve discussed in a previous blog post (https://wordpress.com/stats/day/friendoftheimmigrant.wordpress.com) that undocumented immigrants do, in fact, have a significant positive impact on state economies. The shortsighted view of these states has negatively impacted families across the country today. Working immigrants have been anxiously awaiting this decision for months now, and this is not the outcome they, nor we, had hoped for.
President Obama summed up his disappoint by stating that the decision “takes us further from the country we aspire to be.” He also called it “frustrating” and “heartbreaking.” Those are words that surely resonate with the impacted immigrants during this time. The progression of immigration reform in the United States seems to have lost momentum for the moment and, with the presidential election coming up, reform could be even further away. These are the issues we as a nation need to address this election season.
Written by: Bailey Nunez
