While the Democrats and Republicans agree that the current immigration system in the United States is broken and badly in need of reform, a number of observers claim that the executive action taken by President Obama may actually cause more harm in the long term by making it more difficult to create an entirely new system that can be championed by both political parties.
The next presidential election will take place next year and Obama will not be up for re-election, having served two terms in the Oval Office. Many fear that should a Republican be elected president, Obama’s executive actions will be repealed and it will take even longer for any real immigration reform to be enacted. Many undocumented immigrants are therefore too afraid to try to gain legal status via the new programs started by the president because their identities and addresses would be on file with the US government ‒ a government that could potentially become hostile depending on who gets elected to the White House in 2016.
The executive action taken by the president has been widely criticized by many in the Republican Party. While the immigration system is likely to be changed by Obama’s actions, more far-reaching reforms are now highly unlikely to take place until after the election next year, particularly with the Republican Party now controlling both the Senate and the House of Representatives.