Why Obama Sould Grant Onyango Legal Status

Obama Staying out of Aunt’s Immigration Process

This is a sad story on two levels, the human and the political. Apparently Obama has an aunt, Zeituni Onyango, who has lived in the US illegally and is currently going through the legal immigration process. Obama is her only family in the US and there has been no contact.

Onyango lives in public housing and has medical condition, Guillian-Barre syndrome.

The timeline and details can be found here. The article is a good well written one, ignore the awful headline, Onyago’s sobbing is not what this story is about.

This is sad on a human level because it just is, a 57 year old person wanting to build a life with a severe medical condition and no permanent legal status in the country that she has made her home. This is an unhappy but not uncommon story. Countries have to have immigration policies – in this world at least, and a framework of rules has to be in place to operate said immigration policy.

The politics are the maddening thing here. Obama is in a dammed if he does and dammed if he doesn’t position regarding this. He can sign her into the country with a wave of his pen or do nothing and let things take there course, which seems to be his preferred course of action. Either way the haters and the teabaggers will have a field day:

Give her permanent status and the knuckle dragging right wing will claim that he is undermining America and opening the floodgates. They will also, or at least their puppetmasters will, allow this to feed into the whole birther fantasy.

Refuse to get involved and he will be seen as weak and ineffectual, unwilling to even help a member of his own family because of perceived political damage to himself. This will be tied into the bowing to foreigners, critical of America meme.

Oddly enough these opposites give Obama his best out: Sign a paper giving Onyango a green card and tell the wingnuts that being President comes with some perks as well as responsibilities. They do at least understand the logic of leveraging any advantage at all times.

This approach will also make it appear that Obama is big on family and that is really big with the extreme social right – hate the world but you must love family unconditionally.

So, for both humane and political reasons Obama needs to sign off on this and more to the point, when the flack starts, which it will, not be defensive.