President Obama is scheduled to announce his Executive Action Plan tomorrow, Thursday night.  Meanwhile, today, the Senate is debating immigration reform and President Obama’s anticipated announcement.  Besides offering some relief for families, we are hoping to see some other administrative fixes that deal with the legal immigration system.  See my two blog posts on proposals for family and business fixes that can be accomplished administratively without the need for Congressional Action.  As a reminder to our readers, regarding expansion of opportunities for those in the US illegally, President Obama cannot create new categories or requirements for green cards or visas or citizenship.  Only Congress can do that. Further, the President cannot fix the numbers of visas available for green cards or cap subject visas such as H-1Bs, H-2Bs and more. Only Congress can change those numbers.  Thus, for those here illegally, the most that can be offered by the President are things like deferred action expansion. Deferred action means the government will defer, i.e., not carry out deportation.  The President can allow wider use of “Parole in Place” currently used primarily for military families that would allow people to adjust status through family rather than consular process a case.  He could also relax the standards for “extreme hardship” waivers of the unlawful presence or other waiver categories.  But, he cannot get rid of the requirement for waivers.

On the business front, he could change current policy on employer-employee relationships so that more entrepreneurs could benefit from existing business visa categories. He could do a top-down directive to adjudicators to have a less anti-business attitude.  He could via regulation provide for work authorization for H-1B spouses in H-4 status.  He could expand the types of business visa categories that can be expedited (or better yet, rather than require the extortionist premium processing fee, mandate that decisions be made within a specific shorter period of time) to provide employers with more predictability.

What the Executive Order will contain, at this point, however, is unknown. Stay tuned the next few days for updates!