Recently, immigration, civil rights and labour groups came together in a legal effort to defend the recently announced executive action of President Obama, by filing an “Amicus”, or a “Friend-of-the-court” brief. There are 25 states that are currently suing the President over executive action, and these cases will receive their first hearing sometime in January. There are legal experts however, including conservatives who widely agree that the entire process of executive action is legal; in fact, almost every president since Eisenhower has used his powers of office to help affect immigration policy.

The recent Amicus brief was filed by many immigration centres, like the National Immigration Law Centre, the American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Define American, National Immigrant Justice Centre, New Orleans Workers’ Centre for Racial Justice, Service Employees International Union, Southern Poverty Law Centre, and United We Dream. The amicus brief provided economic, fiscal and moral reasons to support executive action, while also provided effective testimonials that talk about the potential beneficiaries of executive action.

As an executive director of an immigration law centre puts it – “President Obama’s executive action was not just about policy- it was about people. It is sad that a court was asked to block a policy that would keep families together and improve the economy, in fact, any delay to the implementation of the new deferred action initiatives would not only hurt immigrants but it would hurt everybody.”