WASHINGTON, November 20 (Sputnik) – US President Barack Obama will face congressional repercussions if he uses an executive authority to enact immigration reform, US Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement on Thursday.
“If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act,” Senator McConnell said.
“The action he [President Obama] has proposed would ignore the law, would reject the voice of the voters, and would impose new unfairness on law-abiding immigrants — all without solving the problem," he added.
McConnell's warning comes ahead of President Obama's Thursday evening primetime televised address on immigration reform. On Friday, President Obama said that he plans to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada to promote his plan of action at a local school.
“Imposing his will unilaterally may seem tempting. It may serve him politically in the short term. But he knows that it will make an already-broken system even more broken," Senator McConnell said.
Obama has promised to fix the United States’ “broken” immigration system since he assumed office in 2009, but after several attempts failed, US president assured that he would take action before the end of the year.
Republicans have expressed their outrage over President Obama's plans to use his executive power to pass a comprehensive immigration reform and have threatened to oppose his order, or even to impeach him.
According to US media reports, if President Obama's executive action succeeds, some five million undocumented immigrants in the United States could be granted legal status and provided with work permits.
