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Nation Built on Immigrants Reconsiders Immigration

Posted April 18th, 2016 at 11:25 am (UTC-4)
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Few issues are as emotional—and call upon America’s collective morality—as immigration.

“It makes us special, it makes us strong, it’s makes us Americans.”

The words of a visibly frustrated President Barack Obama in 2014, during his announcement that he had used his executive authority to shield illegal immigrants from deportation after failing to pass a reform bill in Congress. Two years later, the United States Supreme Court takes up the battle again in The United States versus Texas, which challenges the president’s decision (via executive action) to make four million illegal immigrants legal. For border states like Texas, the reality of undocumented Mexican children showing up alone with no resources is felt daily. So it is no coincidence that Texas led the charge all the way to the Supreme Court against Obama’s solution to the country’s growing and ever more complex immigration situation.

And with Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump threatening to send immigrants back home and “build a wall” around U.S. borders, the inevitable tensions around illegal immigration have been stoked to feverish levels.

All eyes are on the court.