American Presidentialism in the Light of Barack Obama’s Immigration Reform

The main purpose of this article is to bring the reader into an atmosphere of intensity created by the political disputes about the need of immigration reform in the United States. It is unquestionable that problems of the immigrants, who for decades were crossing illegally American borders, contribute to internal political turbulence in this country. This article proceeds on the assumption, that the immigration related problems created a social melting pot which became one of the most serious challenges for the American policymakers. The confrontation of the President with Congress was inevitable. On the one hand, Obama’s administration started to regulate the status of illegal immigrants by executive orders; on the other hand, the Congress was determined to bloc these actions as illegal attempts of the President violating the prerogatives of the legislative body. The conflict resulted in the stalemates which seriously undermined the effectiveness of the American system of checks and balances. The lack of legal certainty, a necessary component of the reliability of the democratic governments, triggered the dispute over the values of the interpretational flexibility of the Constitution of the United States. This article is in Polish