President Obama is not the first President to use his executive power aggressively. President Lincoln used an Executive Order in 1861 to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. The Supreme Court held that his action was unconstitutional. President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to change the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1937 in order to gain favorable votes for his New Deal legislation.

Critics of the president’s executive actions on immigration reform go too far when they claim that immigrants are harmful to the US economy. Simplistic appeals to economic logic, gilded with nativist assumptions, hint that the arrival of millions of immigrant workers cannot help but compete for a finite number of American-based jobs.

Two weeks after the midterm election of 2014, President Obama announced a series of executive actions on immigration policy in a fifteen-minute televised speech from the White House. The centerpiece was announcing “deferred action” for up to five million undocumented immigrant adults, including work permits and drivers’ licenses for those who register.

Research Fellow Clint Bolick discusses immigration reform on the Larry Kudlow Show.