United States

Deportation policy changes, the immigration law ruling, and sustaining Obamacare’s “individual mandate”

Immigration policy remained central to the national conversation. In June the Obama administration announced that deportation proceedings would no longer be initiated against illegal immigrants age 30 and younger who had been brought to the United States before age 16, had lived in the country for at least five years, did not have a criminal record or pose a security threat, and were students, veterans, or high-school graduates. Those who qualified received a two-year reprieve from deportation and the opportunity to pursue a work permit.

Also in June, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the provision of Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law that required police to check the legal status of anyone they stop for another law enforcement concern if they reasonably suspect that person to be in the United States illegally; however, the court struck down three of the law’s provisions, including one that permitted police to arrest individuals solely on the suspicion of being in the country illegally and another that criminalized undocumented immigrants’ pursuit of employment.

In what some saw as its most important decision since Bush v. Gore in 2000, the Supreme Court at the end of June upheld (5–4) the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, most notably ruling not to strike down the act’s “individual mandate” provision by which Americans were required to obtain health insurance by 2014 or face financial penalties (see Affordable Care Act cases). The decision preserved what was for Obama the signature legislative achievement of the first three years of his presidency.