President Obama to Discuss Immigration Tonight
President Barack Obama is scheduled to discuss the immigration system tonight, and it’s a hot topic that many Montgomery County residents say they will be watching.
Jonathan Jayes-Green, of Silver Spring, said he is “cautiously optimistic.” Jayes-Green is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient. His parents wanted to give him a better education and more opportunities in life, so the family moved to Maryland from Panama when he was 13 years old.
“I don’t want to get too excited. … I think that I can’t express enough how cautious I am about this announcement,” he said.
DACA is an executive order signed by President Obama in 2012 that allows eligible undocumented young people to have work permit and protects from deportation for two years. It does not give a path to citizenship.
Jayes-Green plans to watch the announcement with others DACA recipients and supporters at the University of Maryland in College Park. His parents could potentially benefit from tonight’s announcement.
“My parents are currently undocumented. I hope that it will include them,” he said.
Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Navarro wrote in an email to MyMCMedia that she “applauds” President Obama for taking this great additional step to provide relief for millions of families and professionals.
“He is following the historic tradition of this country: we are a nation of immigrants. President Obama is not doing something unique; many other presidents have used executive orders for this exact purpose in the past. He must take this important action now because Congress has shown its absolute inability to accomplish anything,” Navarro wrote.
Click here to watch tonight’s announcement.
At 8pm ET, President Obama will announce new steps to fix our broken immigration system → http://t.co/aahVLPoYN6 pic.twitter.com/QxljXOTpuc
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 20, 2014
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