Yesterday Sam Olens, the attorney general of the state of Georgia, predicted that the fight over President Obama’s executive on immigration reform could reach the US Supreme Court and drag on for another two years.
Olens, who is a Republican in one of the 26 states that have taken legal action to try to prevent the president’s unilateral immigration reform, made his comments to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution before a vital court hearing on the issue on Friday. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in New Orleans, is set to hear two hours of arguments on the matter. “I would firmly expect that one to two years from now this case will be in the US Supreme Court,” Olens claims. “This could easily take two years. Wouldn’t it be smarter for Congress and the president to pass [an immigration] bill in that time frame?”
Obama announced in November last year that he was taking executive action to protect millions of undocumented immigrants already living and working in the United States from the threat of deportation. This would apply to undocumented immigrants whose children are legally permanent residents or who have US citizenship, as well as those undocumented immigrants who came to the country as minors.
The 26 states suing the president say that his actions are unconstitutional, and in February a Texas judge slapped a temporary injunction on the program.