STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you have the right to make that decision on your own? OBAMA: Absolutely. If you look, every president – Democrat and Republican – over decades has done the same thing as I mentioned in my remarks today. George H. W. Bush, about 40% of the undocumented persons, at the time, were provided a similar kind of relief as a consequence of executive action- STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know the response of both Reagan – but in that case, there were bipartisan bills passed, they were acting after the bills were passed, not because Congress did not act. OBAMA: Well George, I’m not sure that argues in favor. If Congress acted specifically and left something out and then a President goes ahead right afterwards and does more than Congress agreed to, it’s actually not different. It’s similar. The fact is is that we exercise prosecutorial discretion all the time. And, you know, the primary response that I have to Speaker Boehner and others is go ahead and pass legislation. They don’t need me to act. In fact, I encourage them to act but in the meantime what we’ve got to make sure of is, number one that our borders are secure and what I’m doing is going to allow us to put more resources there, number two it’s going to allow us to focus on the people that we really want out. Number three, what it allows us to do is to say to folks who have been here for a while, register, we’re gonna submit — you’re going to submit to a criminal background check and you’re going to pay taxes. Why we would prefer a system in which they’re in the shadows, potentially taking advantage of living here but not contributing makes no sense.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:09:28 +0000
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