Photo Credit: U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia

By Michael D. Shear, Julia Preston and Ashley Parker.

President Barack Obama is expected to ignore angry protests from Republicans and announce as soon as next week a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration enforcement system that will protect up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide many of them with work permits, according to administration officials who have direct knowledge of the plan.

Asserting his authority as president to enforce the nation’s laws with discretion, Obama intends to order changes that will significantly refocus the activities of the government’s 12,000 immigration agents. One key piece of the order, officials said, will allow many parents of children who are U.S. citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away.

That part of Obama’s plan alone could affect as many as 3.3 million people who have been living in the United States illegally for at least five years, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration research organization in Washington. But the White House is also considering a stricter policy that would limit the benefits to people who have lived in the country for at least 10 years, or about 2.5 million people.

Extending protections to more undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, and to their parents, could affect an additional 1 million or more if they are included in the final plan that the president announces.

Obama’s actions will also expand opportunities for immigrants who have high-tech skills, shift extra security resources to the nation’s southern border, revamp a controversial immigration enforcement program called Secure Communities, and provide clearer guidance to the agencies that enforce immigration laws about who should be a low priority for deportation, especially those with strong family ties and no serious criminal history.

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Amnesty is Irreversible

By Rush Limbaugh.

CALLER: Look, what Obama’s trying to do with amnesty by granting legalization and amnesty to five million illegals, while it sounds terrible, I think it really is a great opportunity for this nation, especially conservatives. What we can do is this. As soon as he announces it, let’s say, “Go ahead and do it,” and we’ll make sure that all of these illegals know that in two years and two months, we will reverse this amnesty, and they will become illegals again.

RUSH: No, that’s never gonna happen.

CALLER: We’ll have their name and address.

(crosstalk)

RUSH: He can’t hear me ’cause of our phone system. I’m not being rude, and I don’t want to be rude. But there’s no reversing this. This is not like a piece of legislation that you might think you could repeal or vote out or whatever. You can’t reverse this. We’ve never, ever reversed an amnesty. And, by the way, we’ve never repealed an entitlement, either. Well, that’s not entirely true.

This is a senior citizens Medicare one. Dan “Rosty” Rostenkowski did that. But that happened within days, not years. But there’s no upside to this. A, it’s lawless. We don’t want to applaud lawlessness. There is no political advantage in letting Obama be lawless. We already won an election. We don’t need any more evidence to win an election. “Yeah, let him do this, and it will guarantee us 2016!”

I respectfully have to shut down that kind of thinking. This is ballgame here. Obamacare and this are ballgame, in terms of the transformation of this country. Now, you might think, “Well, Rush, but we’re gonna know who they are!” They’re gonna play games with this, by the way. They’re not gonna say it’s amnesty. They’re gonna say we’re just not gonna deport ’em.

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