OBAMA IMMIGRATION ORDER: Former IJ Charles Ware's Analysis

www.CharlesJeromeWare.com.  "Here to make a difference."  Attorney Charles Jerome Ware was formerly the youngest Immigration Judge (IJ) in the history of the United States.  For questions or an initial consultation, contact him at (410) 720-6129 or (410) 730-5016, or email former IJ Charles Ware at charlesjeromeware@msn.com.
President Barack Obama's Executive Order announced last evening (Thursday, 11-20-2014) provides legal-worker status to millions of currently undocumented immigrants already in the United States.  As I study and analyze the potential impact of the President's Executive Order, I am reminded of a similar Ronald Reagan president-era 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which allowed about 1.7 million undocumented immigrants to become lawful permanent residents and roughly one million farm workers to apply for higher levels of legal status.
[see, "The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986" (IRCA), p. 104, The Immigration Paradox: 15 Tips for Winning Immigration Cases (Book)]
In my best-selling book, The Immigration Paradox, I summarize the 1986 IRCA as follows:
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
A perceived need to curtail or halt "illegal immigration" moved Congress to enact a new law in 1986: the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, also known as the "Simpson-Mazzoli Act."  This Act was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986.
In a nutshell (pardon the pun), the Act toughened criminal sanctions against employers who hired "illegal aliens," denied "illegal aliens" federally-funded welfare, and it legitimized some aliens through an amnesty program [see, Chapter 16: "What is an 'Illegal Alien', exactly?," supra].
The 1986 Reagan Republican IRCA law was far more legally-reaching than President Obama's executive order.  It had an almost instantaneous impact on the labor market.
Federal data showed that immigrants in farming and sales jobs were the most likely to move to higher-paying work in different industries.
By the time they became naturalized in the early 1990s, just 4% of farm workers were in the same industry, while roughly a quarter of those workers had shifted over to construction and other laborer jobs with better pay, according to a study published in 2002 by the federal agency that handled immigration policy.
Other workers, though, were less likely to move. One-third of undocumented immigrants who worked in service-sector or professional, managerial and technical jobs stayed in their sector even after becoming naturalized.
Economists and politicians have widely different views on what impact Mr. Obama’s executive order will have on the labor market and the economy, with much depending on the details he puts forward.
President Obama's Executive Order
1. Protecting Parents: The executive order will protect from deportation 3.7 million parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for more than five years, according to an estimate from the Migration Policy Institute.  They will be eligible to enroll in a program providing temporary relief from deportation and authorization to work.  They will need to register with the government, pass background checks and pay taxes.
2. More Dreamers:  The White House said 270,000 more people will be eligible to enroll in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which will be extended to include people brought to the U.S. as children before 2010-the previous deadline was June 15, 2007-and will eliminate the age cap, which had been 31.
3. Timing:  The White House said the Customs and Immigration Service, which will administer the program, won't begin taking applications until early 2015.
According to the Wall Street Journal (Friday, 11-21-2014, A5), the Executive Order is expected to "give more than four million illegal immigrants the chance to apply for work permits and a temporary reprieve from deportation."