as always, we take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal is next. ♪ good morning, it is monday, april 18, 2016. you looking at a live shot of the supreme court which becomes ground zero the fight for president obama's executive action on immigration. the eight sitting justices will hear in united -- hear argument in united states the texas. ifch will determine president obama can shield millions of immigrants from deportation. before that happens, we are opening up our phone lines this morning on the washington journal. to hear from our journals ahead -- viewers ahead of the opening

arguments. we set up our phone lines a bit differently. if you are a recent legal immigrant, phone number (202) 748-8000. illegal immigrants you can call in threat to show (202) 748-8001 , all others (202) 748-8002. you can also catch up with us on social media on twitter @cspanwj , on facebook, facebook.com/c-span. a good morning to you. four blocks or my studio location on the east said in united dates capital, the supreme court is the focused today. crowds are expected to gather this morning throughout the morning i had of those arguments that are expected to begin around 10:00 a.m.. the supreme court in that case the focus of the headlines. here is the wall street journal.

supreme court will challenge to obama move to limit deportation of millions. the front page of the washington times, obama's immigration case reverberates for constitution. in the new york times, the headline chief justice under scrutiny again as court hears immigration case. today,front page of usa ohio towns immigration message for high court and supreme court -- as supreme court hearing looms. richard wolf is the author of that story. he also joins us by phone. good morning to you. guest: good morning, how are you? host: thank you for joining us. i want to take us how we got here today and what these executive actions specifically are that this case focuses on. like many things in washington, this case grows out of gridlock in congress. the president did not make

immigration reform his priority when he first got here in 2009. he focused on health care. as a result, you saw the muscle he had any mandate he had to get health care through. immigration for -- reform languished. he tried to push a reform package that would ease up on a lot of the folks here who are here without documents. the house of representatives would not go along. he pushed through by executive action, a program called deferred action for childhood arrivals. that went through without too much objection. that is a program that allows immigrants who came here without documents as children, brought here with their parents, no-fault of their own. to be able to get deferred deportation, in other words, temporary protection from deportation. you won't be deported for in that case two years. it is renewable after those years. that enables you to apply for

work authorization, to receive work associated benefits like health care, disability, retirement, not welfare benefits. those people become not really lawful residence, but become temporary residence without any fear of deportation. withoutd those people fear of deportation, would have to be paying taxes as well. guest: yes. if they are working, they would become taxpayers. in 2014, this was november 2014, the president pushed through, well attempted to push through a program called the deferred action for parents of americans and lawful permanent residents. the president and administration argue is to prevent the breakup of families. you have citizen children, these are children who came -- whose parents came without documents and then gave birth to children who are because they are born

here. also other children were lawful residence. their parents are the one who were the focus of this program. to 4 the estimates are up million parents could qualify for this program, it's not a blanket thing where everyone would get this benefit right away, they would off to apply individually through a slow process. and then if they got that benefit -- if they got that status, they could then apply for work authorization. that is another process they have to go through. the administration always says, each person has to apply for this and they need to pass background checks and they need to show that they do not have alan these or a quantity of misdemeanors on the record. they need to have been here since january 1 of 2010. if they pass all of these hurdles, they would be eligible for this deferred action. it is protection from deportation, in this case for three years.

also i should say at the same time, the president also sought to expand the program for children with some minor changes including making that timeslot from two years to three years. now it would be three years of deferral from deportation. you would pay a fee for this. ,f you are unable to get this you pay $455. host: these were immediately challenged. guest: the president's office in november of 2014. before the winter was over, a district court judge in , the court, texas was hand-picked by the plaintiffs in this case. they went to this court and in february of 2015, he ruled that texas likely have standing to sue and that a reasonable

likelihood of winning. he blocked the program nationally, he issued a preliminary injunction. he said obama likely violated the administrative procedure act , partially by simply not giving notice and speaking -- seeking public comment when you do regulatory changes in the government, a lot of changes need this process to go through where you issue a notice of what you intend to do. you seek public comment. judge said the president violated this, he never ruled on the merits, we have not gotten to that stage. he issued a national preliminary injunction which basically pocket -- block the program. they appealed to the fifth circuit court of appeals which is in louisiana. it is the appeals court for texas, louisiana and mississippi. and that court by a two to one margin in november, last november. it's been a year since the president sought to start this, upheld the district court decision and said they went the

aunt did and said obama likely exceeded his authority. that he doesn't have his executive authority to be setting immigration law. host: and this case eventually made its way to the supreme court today. are there tea leaves to be read today? what are we looking for today in the justice's questions to be two sides? guest: the presumption is the four, i'm going to use the terms liberal unsecured -- conservative, it's not been -- an indication. the four more liberal justices are presumably on obama side either hehink that can go forward with this process or at the least, that texas did not have the proper standing to be suing the federal government in this case. quickly, the say issue there, it could be very important, is that texas says

with the other states -- with 25 other states backing it up, the reason it has standing to sue is that it would have to pay a portion of the drivers licenses for these people. it's a very important benefit they would be eligible to receive. them are running around without -- driving around about drivers license or did so they say the cost of the drivers license is what texas says make them able to sue. hasf justice john roberts never liked a broad policy of making it easy for anyone to sue , whether that's the states, individuals, companies or whomever. he could take a very dim view of whether this license plate argument is enough for texas to prove it has immediate or almost immediate injury, your abdomen injury, you have to show you have been injured in order to go to court. that will be one thing to look for. another thing is just anthony

kennedy, usually the swing vote. but there's no real swing vote anymore when you're at a quarter of eight. anthony kennedy wrote the 2012 on thejune of last major immigration case out of arizona where arizona tried to do certain things on its own after being frustrated by a lack of federal enforcement. ,hile that decision was split it mostly went in favor of the federal government in all but one instance and kennedy was the author of that decision. it was a 6-3 decision. all eyes as usual are on justice kennedy and in a certain degree chief justice roberts. those are the two that could push the case in obama's favor. the worst that would happen would be a 4-4 tie vote. that upholds the fifth circuit court of appeals decision which went against the administration, so 4-4 and the program at least the program-- ends

at least to the obama administration. host: when we set here the decision question mark --? guest: i would not expect a decision until the end of june. when the court wasn't a conference after the case is heard, if they are tied for-four and they don't -- if they don't but i think they will try, if they don't try to get out of the 4-4 deadlock and if that's just going to be the final result, it's possible we would hear that sooner. the court doesn't write anything when that happens. this has only been a recent occurrence after scalia's death. they just lock up for-four and issue a one sentence ruling, basically we are tied for-four and that confirms the lowest -- the lower courts ruling. that if that will decision we did hear that an anytime. host: richard wolf, a reporter for usa today.

thank you so much for your time this morning. guest: anytime, take care. host: we are talking to our viewers throughout the show about the supreme court case that's happening. we will show you live pictures and interviews from the supreme court steps ahead of when the justices are expected to hear those arguments starting around 10:00 this morning. our phone lines for our program, if you-- (202) 748-8000 are a recent legal immigrant. if you are any legal immigrant and want to call in. others,8-8002 for all we will put those phone lines up for you throughout the show. you can call in as ed did from lawrenceville, georgia on that line for others. good morning. caller: good morning. i think the thing that upsets me the most is when president obama says that he doesn't have money

to send the illegals back, but he has the money to give them welfare. i don't understand that, if you have money to give them welfare, how do you not have money to send them back? i don't know what he's doing. i thought he was going to do for theg african-americans when he got into office, but he seems to be mexico happy. ed inthat is lawrenceville, georgia. we will be talking about immigration trends and immigration statistics as well this morning in our 8:00 hour, we will be joined by doris meiss of who tracks a lot immigration statistics in the united states. we will talk to her about immigration patterns as well as some of those numbers. if you comments on facebook already this morning as we are talking about today's supreme court case. steve wrightson, a waste of time by republicans, you can't afford it afford millions of people every year.

you need to focus on the criminals first and not the families. , zachary writes splitting families is not will, but legality does not always played in the same hand is what is morally correct. there is so much gray area in the 14th of meant -- amendment, it is hard to say. and as the is the key, even reagan knew this. carillon twitter writes, i am sick of obama's -- obama doing as he pleases. what part of the legal does obama not understand? he just wants more votes for democrats. we will be looking for your tweets and post on facebook and looking for your calls as well. phone lines a little bit different this morning. if you are a recent legal immigrant, the phone number is (202) 748-8000. immigrant,an illegal (202) 748-8001. all others (202) 748-8002.

we will go to that line for all others. baltimore maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. from -- mmigrated here it took us two years, i was a veteran of the time in the military. , so i can get any kind of benefits to get over here. it shipped to go through all kinds of hoops and all kind of stuff that the american public to go idea of what her through. i'm completely against obama's plan, it's basically putting other people in line in front of the american citizens and people who legally immigrated. host: how much did it cost her family? you talk about the timing, but what you estimated talk -- cost you to get illegal immigration process done? caller: it cost a couple of thousand dollars. you had to pay for medical

doctor to see her, we had to pay for it three times. her while shet was overseas and then support myself while waiting for the time to go by, i'm paying for her place and i'm paying for my place. this wasn't even seen as a hardship by immigration, i wrote in and said this is an economic hardship. they do not care. according to the state department, it took six months. it took two years. this was while i was deployed overseas in the military, i even asked about that. the american public doesn't realize that this is what actually happens to the citizens who are legally bringing their family members over to the country, what of actually going through? nobody is asking that question. what is the process to legally immigrate here? all the focus on is his we will

help all these people who are here illegally and let's he would we can do for them. what can we do for the people world trying to do the right thing question mark --? host: now that your family has stood in that line, what you think would be most helpful? caller: i definitely think it should be shortened, especially for members of citizenship like veterans or people who are been in the military or do some in us of the government. they should have consideration, but for everybody else, just streamline the process. the process can be streamlined a lot more than what it is. for the people that are in line. it's a big -- you can barely get in when you call to them. to justes it takes days even call and for some of to answer the phone actually --

and then it's five or six different departments doing the same thing for the government. there are five to six different places you call in to get the exact same function done. and it gets passed from one office to the other office. this kind of bureaucracy needs to be streamlined, i'm not saying people need to lose their job, it just needs to be streamlined better for the legal process. she is here now, thank god. it was a nightmare just to get over here. and the background checks, she had to do a background check for entire life. it was ingested you have a felonies in america. it was have you done anything ever wrong in your entire life. , the legalcal screen process is incredible. it should be a lot of screening of stuff like that, but we are proposing people who are here now is to basically circum-vent

-- all of these that everything else is going to have to go through. and we don't know what they've done back home. what they do back home? host: appreciate you sharing your family story. a lot of folks out there who want to call in and talk about this case. our phone lines are open. a bit of a different set up this morning on our phone line. lines for recent legal immigrants, illegal immigrants and all others. we will put the numbers on the screen. pierce, florida on that line for all others. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. i just wanted to call him. your first caller that called in , just wanted to let you guys thati'm a christian and means christlike. people all of this world are sisters and brothers.

what he said was that president obama is mexican happy and should do more for afghan americans. -- african-americans. presidentt vote for a anybody -- presidentver have a who didn't look out for everybody. i thank you for letting me speak this morning. is in leland, mississippi. good morning, america. i want to express something to america and the world. you have african-americans who basically built this country. up to 90% of the workers at the civil war was driven off slave labor. you have all