The White House takes on the idea of amnesty and more in talking points sent to Democratic Congressional offices, according to a Hill source who shared them with BuzzFeed News.
The talking points touch on legal authority and efforts to defund President Obama's imminent executive actions on immigration.
Read them here:
Talking Points: Immigration Accountability
November 19, 2014
Today, the President announced that he will address the nation tomorrow night from the White House, and on Friday he will travel to Del Sol High School in Las Vegas. In both speeches, the President will detail action he is taking to help fix our broken immigration system by increasing accountability and ensuring everyone plays by the same set of rules.
The actions the President will take this week are about securing the border, holding undocumented immigrants accountable and ensuring everyone plays by the same rules.
Acting with legal authority, the President's Immigration Accountability Executive Actions are an important step to fix our broken immigration system.
The executive actions crack down on illegal immigration at the border, prioritize deporting felons not families, and require certain undocumented immigrants to pass a criminal background check and pay taxes.
These are common sense steps, but only Congress can finish the job. As the President acts, he'll continue to work with Congress on a comprehensive, bipartisan bill—like the one passed by the Senate more than a year ago—that can replace these actions and fix the whole system.
Over more than half a century, every president—Democratic or Republican—has used his legal authority to act on immigration. President Obama is now taking another common sense step.
On amnesty…
Taxes and background checks aren't amnesty. That's accountability. Doing nothing—that's amnesty.
We need to focus on deporting felons, not families; criminals, not children.
On legal authority…
Every President for more than half a century, both Democrats and Republicans, has taken executive action on immigration.
The President's actions are temporary. House Republicans need to do their job and pass the bipartisan Senate bill to provide a permanent fix.
On funding or shutdown threats…
Republicans are blocking funding to conduct millions of background checks.
Another Republican Shutdown, but this time over collecting taxes from undocumented immigrants.
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