The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will consider a legal challenge to President Barack Obama’s sweeping immigration reforms that look to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported.
The legal challenge to Obama’s executive actions, designed to bypass the Republican-majority Congress, was filed by Texas and 25 other Republican-governed states.
The uptake of the case by the Supreme Court is expected to keep the immigration issue prominent in the presidential race. A decions on the legal challenge is expected in June, a month before both the Democratic and Republican party conventions.
Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton made her views clear, via Twitter:
.@POTUS' action should be upheld so families can stay together and live without fear of deportation. -H https://t.co/qkj7UiZUyR
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 19, 2016
The program, the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, could potentially protect as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported. It was make them eligible to lawfully work and qualify them for health care and retirement benefits.
Obama signed the order in November 2014, lifting the immediate threat of deportation for those with no criminal record whose children are U.S. citizens.
“Deferred action would give these parents and children the dignity of coming forward and being counted,” the Justice Department argued in asking the court to hear the case.
“Without work authorization, they are more likely to work for employers who will hire them illegally, often at below-market wages, thereby hurting American workers and giving unscrupulous employers an unfair advantage.”
Reuters news agency reports that this case, along with a challenge to Texan abortion laws, is one of the most important the Supreme Court will decide this term.
If the court rules in Obama’s favor, the president would have to implement the program before the end of his term, and even then, the next president could decide to ax it.
This content was originally published by teleSUR.