Archive

Posts Tagged ‘deferred action’
July 28th, 2014 at 8:11 pm
A More ‘Proportional’ Response than Impeachment?

Add First Lady Michelle Obama and various members of the Democratic Party to the chorus of politicos discussing the possibility of impeaching President Barack Obama.

The First Lady warned a group of donors that, “If we lose these midterm elections, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to finish what we started because we’ll just see more of the same out in Washington – more obstructions, more lawsuits, and talk about impeachment.”

A series of fundraising email blasts was then sent on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee begging immediate donations to thwart a Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate. “ALL GIFTS TODAY ARE TRIPLE-MATCHED!” blared the emails.

Despite all this, impeachment is still seen in most quarters as far-fetched. Simple math says the GOP needs at least 67 senators to ensure conviction (since the Constitution requires a 2/3 vote). For context, the GOP needs to pick up six seats just to get 51 members and control of the chamber.

Beyond counting noses, there’s a concern that impeaching the president at this stage would be disproportionate. Better, say thoughtful critics like Byron York, for Republicans to pass legislation that overturns the executive orders and policy directives they loathe – such as deferred action – and dare Democrats in Congress to vote to defend Obama.

Though York doesn’t think impeachment should be an option at all, his ‘proportionate’ thesis dovetails nicely with what Andrew McCarthy has written about in his book, Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment. McCarthy says that although pursuing impeachment is justified, it won’t work unless the groundwork has been laid with the public to show conclusively that Obama can’t be trusted to follow the law. It’s hard to imagine a better way to make that case than with a string of presidential vetoes usurping Congress’ constitutional power to legislate.

Should that come to pass, perhaps the only proportionate action left to take would be impeachment.

June 11th, 2014 at 7:34 pm
Surge in Illegal Immigration Triggered by Alleged Fed Govt. ‘Free Passes’

A Border Patrol memo obtained by the Washington Times and referenced today in a Senate hearing identifies the main reason Central American women and children are risking illegal entry into the United States – A guaranteed ‘free pass’ by federal government.

“The immigrants come seeking ‘permisos,’ which apparently are the ‘notices to appear,’ the legal documents given to non-Mexicans caught at the border,” reports the paper. “Those notices officially put the immigrants into deportation proceedings. The immigrants usually are released to await a court date, giving them a chance to fade into the shadows in the interior of the U.S.”

According to the Border Patrol memo, “This information is apparently common knowledge in Central America and is spread by word of mouth and international and local media.” It goes on to say that, “A high percentage of the subjects interviewed stated their family members in the U.S. urged them to travel immediately, because the United States government was only issuing immigration ‘permisos’ until the end of June 2014.”

The only permissive immigration policy I’m aware of that is slated to end this month is President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – or DACA – program.

In my column this week I explain how President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action program impels more illegal immigrants to bring or send for their children, hoping that once here the federal government will expand the de facto amnesty program.

Recently, President Obama announced that he is extending DACA another two years to the end of his presidency. That means we can expect to see increasing numbers of Central American and perhaps other illegal immigrants flooding into the country seeking those promised “permisos” that allow them to drift into the shadows and avoid deportation.

Given enough time to put down roots perhaps they’ll demand to come out of the shadows on a pathway to citizenship.

September 20th, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Pro-Amnesty Activists Besiege White House

How’s this for gratitude?

A group of pro-amnesty activists chained themselves to the White House fence this week demanding that President Barack Obama stop deporting an estimated 1,000 illegal immigrants a day, reports USA Today.

The chain gang members are affiliated with the National Day Labor Organizing Network. Their specific demand is pretty breathtaking, even by liberal standards.

From their radical perspective, President Obama “has the power to reduce deportations, the legal authority to expand deferred action, and the political obligation to lead the national debate through bold action.” “Unless the President alters course, he risks cementing his legacy as having presided over the most anti-immigrant administration in history,” NDLON’s executive director said in a statement to the Washington Post.

Remember, this is the same president who unilaterally implemented the DREAM Act last summer through executive order, even though the bill has never been passed by Congress. By presidential fiat, up to 1.6 million illegal immigrants will not be deported as required by law.

But NDLON wants more. They claim that despite any explicit statutory or constitutional authority the president has the power to expand deferred action to all illegal immigrants, effectively granting amnesty to 11 million people.

To his credit, President Obama says it can’t be done. Doing so “would be ignoring the law in a way that would be very difficult to defend legally,” Obama told an interviewer on Telemundo.

Much like the administration’s decision last week not to grant an ObamaCare waiver to certain unions, the president’s refusal to double-down on lawless amnesty is an encouraging sign that some measure of respect for the rule of law is emerging at the White House.

Let’s see if it lasts.

August 22nd, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Rubio to House GOP: ‘Obama Will Legalize Immigrants If Senate Bill Not Passed’

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is using an interesting tactic to get House Republicans to pass his immigration reform bill – Scare them with threats of a lawless presidency.

“I believe this president will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, he will be tempted to issue an executive order as he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen,” the presumptive 2016 presidential candidate told a Florida radio station last week.

In effect, Rubio is telling House Republicans – opponents of his pathway to citizenship plan for illegal immigrants – that unless they pass the Senate Gang of Eight’s bad bill President Barack Obama will enlarge his controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Brought to life last year via executive order, Obama directed immigration agents to put illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children at the bottom of the deportation list. The policy also makes available temporary work visas to those covered.

But Rubio, a University of Miami law school graduate and former Speaker of the Florida House, has his eyes on the wrong target.

For one thing, not even the liberal academics that provided cover for the president’s unilateral and unprecedented action think Obama has the power to defer action on every illegal immigrant.

“The justifications for DACA made clear that this is not a situation where the president can reduce overall enforcement of immigration laws. He can just redirect it in certain ways,” former principal deputy attorney general and current University of Virginia law professor David A. Martin told the Washington Post.

And even if President Obama did decide not to enforce any immigration laws, why is his lawlessness an argument against Republicans? Wouldn’t the proper response to an expanded abuse of presidential power be to oppose the president?

Yet it seems like Rubio is giving Obama a pass while preemptively blaming House Republicans for future bad acts the president may commit.

Only in a place like Washington does that kind of logic make sense. If Rubio really believes that the President of the United States won’t be constrained by the separation of powers and the rule of law, then the object of his anger should be directed at the White House, not Republicans in the House of Representatives.

August 29th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Heritage: Courts Can Easily Sidestep ICE Agents’ Deferred Action Lawsuit

Last week Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents challenging President Barack Obama’s “deferred action” program.

In a recent column I explained how the President’s decision to instruct federal law enforcement not to enforce relevant immigration law is giving some state governments an excuse to further legitimize illegal immigration.

Now the Heritage Foundation is out with an issue brief analyzing the prospects of the ICE agents’ lawsuit.  It doesn’t look good:

The plaintiffs will have a tough row to hoe, regardless of how abusive this new initiative may be in terms of violating the spirit—if not the letter—of the Constitution’s separation of powers, as well as the executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Although the challenge is by no means frivolous, a court may be reluctant to conclude that the plaintiffs have standing.

Even if they are able to establish an “injury in fact,” a court may be tempted to cite prudential standing rules in order to avoid reaching the merits, and to avoid encouraging federal officials to defy orders of their supervisors as a prelude to challenging the legality of those orders in court. As the Supreme Court stated in Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood (1979), “a plaintiff may still lack standing under the prudential principles by which the judiciary seeks to avoid deciding questions of broad social import where no individual rights would be vindicated and to limit access to the federal courts to those litigants best suited to assert a particular claim.”

Key Takeaway: This is a political issue that requires a well thought out policy solution.  Paul Ryan dedicated his career thus far to making the conservative case for budget and entitlement reform.  It’s time for another enterprising Member of Congress to do the same with immigration reform.

August 23rd, 2012 at 6:29 pm
ICE Agents Sue DHS Over “Deferred Action” Amnesty

Just days after the California DMV announced it might use the Obama Administration’s “deferred action” program to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are suing to kill it.

From Huffington Post:

Arizona immigration law author and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is representing 10 immigration agents in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for policies they say prevent them from doing their job of defending the Constitution.

“They’re being ordered by their federal-appointee superiors to break federal law, or if they don’t break federal law, according to their orders they will be disciplined,” Kobach said Thursday on a call with reporters. “This is an absolutely breath-taking assertion of authority and an abuse of authority.”

The complaint’s six causes of action give you a flavor of what Kobach means:

  1. The Directive Expressly Violates Federal Statutes Requiring the Initiation of Removals
  2. The Directive Violates Federal Law By Conferring a Non-Statutory Form of Benefit, Deferred Action, to More than 1.7 Million Aliens, Rather Than a Form of Relief or Benefit that Federal Law Permits on Such a Large Scale
  3. The Directive Violates Federal Law by Conferring the Legal Benefit of Employment Authorization Without Any Statutory Basis and Under the False Pretense of “Prosecutorial Discretion”
  4. The Directive Violates the Constitutional Allocation of Legislative Power to Congress
  5. The Directive Violates the Article II, Section 3, Constitutional Obligation of the Executive to Take Care That the Laws Are Faithfully Executed
  6. The Directive Violates the Administrative Procedure Act Through Conferral of a Benefit Without Regulatory Implementation