In a news conference held on Wednesday, President Obama announced that he plans on fulfilling his pledge to take executive action on immigration despite the loss of control of the Senate.
"Before the end of the year, we’re gonna take whatever lawful actions that I can take that I believe will improve the functioning of our immigration system, that will allow us to surge additional resources to the border where I think the vast majority of Americans have the deepest concern."
President Obama also touched on how he is reaching out to likely-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, as well as Democrat leaders, to gauge the likelihood of immigration legislation either during the lame-duck session or after the new Congress is sworn in.
However, the President did say, "What I'm not going to do is just wait. I think it's fair to say that I've shown a lot of patience and done the work on a bipartisan basis as much as possible and I'm going to keep on doing so. But in the meantime, let's figure out what we can do lawfully through executive action to improve the functioning of the existing system."
Watch the full news conference
