President Barack Obama scolded the Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday by describing their immigration ruling as one moving the country away from where it "aspires to be."
The high court handed Obama a political defeat with its 4-4 decision that would not revive his executive action shielding about four million illegal immigrants from deportation. The court’s deadlocked verdict means that it will defer to the lower court’s decision to block Obama’s immigration plan.
Obama criticized the court ruling during a press conference at the White House before he described the diversity of the American population, arguing this diversity exists because the United States is a nation founded by immigrants.
"One of the reasons why America is such a diverse and inclusive nation is because we are a nation of immigrants," Obama said.
The president then spoke about how the Founding Fathers created this country as a place of "refuge" for immigrants.
"Our Founders conceived this country as a refuge for the world," Obama said. "And for more than two centuries, welcoming wave after wave of immigrants has kept us youthful and dynamic and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character and it has made us stronger."
Obama then said that due to Thursday’s ruling on immigration, the United States is pushed further down a path away from where the country "aspires" to be. He also argued that this indecision puts the immigration system in a worse position.
"But for more than two decades now, our immigration system, everybody acknowledges, has been broken," hObama said. "And the fact the Supreme Court wasn’t able to issue a decision today doesn’t just set the system back even further, it takes us further from the country that we aspire to be."