Manchin: President Should Have Given Congress Timeline on Immigration

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin today criticized President Obama’s new executive rule the will affect millions of illegal immigrants in this country not because of the rule itself he said, but because of the timing.

The President announced the temporary shield for more than 5 million illegal immigrants in a primetime speech Thursday.

The new action prevents people who have been in the country for five years, whose children were born here or whose children are legal citizens from being deported if they apply for temporary citizenship, pass a background check and pay taxes.

Manchin said in a conference call with reporters Friday the president’s rule took provisions from a bi-partisan bill passed by the Senate in 2013 and expanded on them.

Those expansions, he said, he’s still not sure he agrees with, but he does disagree with the timeliness of the announcement.

“I think he should have laid out what he wanted to do, give us a time 90 or 120 days from now, see if Republicans under both House and Senate leadership would move on it, if they hadn’t he’s pretty much said what he would do,” Manchin said.

“You haven’t heard a lot of people speaking against it. What they’re against is the president’s actions.”

Republican Senator-elect Shelley Moore Capito and Congressman David McKinley both released statements following the president’s speech calling his action an overreach of power.

The executive order, however, will only remain in effect for the rest of Obama’s term, which ends in 2016.

Both the President and Sen. Manchin encouraged lawmakers to consider taking action on the 2013 Senate approved bill.