Obama's immigration executive order helps his Democratic lawyer allies, not immigrants

We all agree that our current immigration system is broken. Unfortunately, little has been done to correct the main problems keeping good people from immigrating legally: a cut in the bureaucracy in the application process, and the elimination of President Obama's detention quotas and visa limits. While Republicans should be addressing the red tape in the immigration process, their failure to act has opened the door for President Obama to grandstand on the issue with his recent executive order. However, that doesn't mean he is actually helping immigrants.

Ralph Isenberg, an immigration activist and founder of The Isenberg Center for Immigration Empowerment (ICIE), posted this editorial on his organization's website today, addressing the recent moves by both the President and Congress on the immigration issue. Isenberg believes the President's moves are geared to benefit immigration attorneys (who tend to be Democratic) over the immigrants who truly need relief. Isenberg, for some time, has spoken out against attorneys he feels take advantage of immigrants, while his group provides their services to immigrants at no charge. His statement follows:

Once again, immigration reform has suffered yet another setback. The real question is whether the Congress or the President ever intended to pass meaningful immigration reform in the first place. I am of the opinion that our present immigration laws work just fine with some adjustment to so-called "reforms" during the Clinton era.

Those that say the Republican leadership shot down immigration reform to get at President Obama are not correct. President Obama, by law, has very little to do with the immigration process and the Congress knows this. What the House accomplished in this most recent round was denying the liberal Democratic lawyers that largely make up the legal segment of the immigration field the ability to gain a windfall profit from the immigration issue.

Immigration attorneys and non-immigration attorneys turned immigration attorneys were setting up shop from the Obama announcement. The Republicans in Congress figure the best way to maintain the control in Congress is to make sure Democratic attorneys have no areas where they can obtain windfall profits and pickup votes from sympatric voters.

The Isenberg Center for Immigration Empowerment (ICIE) acts as "a resort of last hope” for foreign nationals. Immigrants come to ICIE because the government's immigration system has failed, and as a result, someone is facing a wrongful deportation. Since their founding in 2011, ICIE has helped hundreds of deserving families, and provides all services pro-bono. The organization deals with the entire family unit, from teaching the basic fundamentals behind community service, to English education, to individualized counseling to build positive mental health. The organization is located in Dallas.