Photo by White House photographer Pete Souza via Flickr
In November of 2014, President Barack Obama—fed up with Congress's failure to move on his second-term agenda, unveiled an executive order to implement modest reforms to the country's broken immigration system. The order offered temporary legal status to nearly 5 million immigrants, and gave them an indefinite reprieve from deportation, mostly shielding parents of children with US citizenship or legal status from being sent back to their respective home countries.
The idea, Obama said at the time, was that the order would finally offer people living in the US illegally to "come out of the shadows" without fear of immigration agents tearing them away from their families.
Shortly after the order was signed, Texas, along with 25 other, mostly Republican-led, states, began challenging it in court. They have won every round so far, prompting the Obama administration to ask the Supreme Court to rule on the issue. On Tuesday, the justices announced that they would take up the case. Oral arguments are expected to begin in April, and hand down a ruling by June. and an appeal from the Obama administration that has now made its way to the Supreme Court.
The way the court rules on Obama's order will have huge implications for the 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally, and for a political issue that has long been a third rail in politics. There's a lot to unpack, so we rang up Rick Su, a professor of immigration law at SUNY Buffalo Law School, to help.
VICE: Let's start with the big question: How do you think the Supreme Court's review of Obama's immigration order will pan out? Is there any indication on which way the justices are leaning?
Rick Su: At this point, it is really hard to tell. The Supreme Court has the discretion to choose which cases it decides to review. As a result, the fact that it chooses to review a particular case usually offers some clue on what it intends to do. This case, however, is unique in that it was almost inevitable that the Supreme Court political controversy. In this respect, the implications of this decision extends beyond the issue of immigration, and may have broader consequences for American politics more generally.
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